A Colchester grandmother who gave blood plasma to help save the lives of unborn babies has been praised by the Blood Transfusion Service.

Gina Urwin, 55, of Straight Road, Colchester, was one of 80 people who regularly gave blood plasma at the Brentwood Blood Transfusion Centre until Government fears about passing on CJD - the human form of BSE or mad cow disease - forced the service to stop.

The plasma was used to make injections to give to pregnant women who run a high risk of having a "blue" baby or stillbirth.

Mrs Urwin said: "It was a very worthwhile thing to do and it is a shame the service has had to stop, especially after all the work which doctors at Brentwood put into building up the donor register and the commitment from the donors."

A special lunch was held in Brentwood to thank all the donors and everyone was presented with a goblet and a certificate.

Caroline Osbourne, donor services manager at Brentwood, explained: "It is really a case of better to be safe than sorry. Last year the Committee for Safety of Medicines advised the Government that there may be a theoretical risk of contracting CJD from blood products collected from UK blood donors.

"It was a difficult decision to take but we decided to stop taking blood plasma in the UK until something can be proved one way or the other."

Mrs Osbourne said plasma was now imported from areas of the United States where there have never been any cases of CJD.

Mrs Osbourne added it was possible the service would restart in the future but it would first have to be confirmed CJD could not be passed on through blood plasma.

Currently there is no way of testing whether or not blood products taken from healthy people contain CJD.

There is no evidence that anyone has ever contracted CJD as a result of a blood transfusion or treatment with a blood product.

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