Removal of deferrals for variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease risk: Impact on new and previously deferred donors

Concern over variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) led to the deferral of donors who had resided in the United Kingdom since January 1980. This deferral was implemented in 1999 and subsequently modified to include other countries. Some deferrals were removed in February 2022; deferrals for the United Kingdom, Ireland and France were removed on 22 November 2023. In this study, we describe efforts made to encourage donation from newly eligible people and the resulting donation gain.

Actions targeted individual donors deferred after 1 January 2012. Marketing included website, social media and general advertising. Staff asked first-time donors if the criteria change had motivated their donation. Deferred and returning donor data were determined from our donor database.

In the 12 months post-implementation, 12.8% of first-time donors surveyed were newly eligible (n = 8667) and 7.8% of vCJD risk deferred donors returned (n = 5159). Eighty-five percent of deferrals occurred pre-2017; the return rate was 6.5% in this group. The highest return rate (24%) occurred in donors deferred after 2020.

Removal of the vCJD deferrals had a major positive impact. The greatest gain was in new donors who had previously self-deferred. Despite intensive efforts, only one-quarter of recently deferred donors returned.