People who have lived in France for protracted periods could be barred from giving blood in Hong Kong to reduce the risk of passing on Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the Hong Kong Red Cross said on Monday.

An existing policy excludes those who lived in Britain for more than six months between 1980 and 1996 from providing blood donations.

"We are seriously considering to extend the policy to cover France and discussions are underway," Lee Cheuk-kwong, a senior medical officer of the Hong Kong Red Cross told Reuters.

He said there was no deadline when a decision would be made because discussions within the Red Cross were still at an early stage.

The fatal brain-wasting disease, a variant of CJD (vCJD), has symptoms similar to those of mad cow disease, or the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) found in animals.

vCJD has killed more than 80 people in Britain and France.

In August, Canada extended its exclusion policy to cover France after implementing a British ban. The United States has plans to follow suit.

Lee said no details have been drawn up for the plan because the problem in France is much more recent than in Britain.

Fears about mad cow disease have swept France after a supermarket chain warned consumers last month it had unwittingly sold meat from a herd in which a cow was found to have had BSE.

Scientists are still divided on the cause of BSE in cattle and its route to humans.

(From ChinaDaily)