The National CJD Surveillance Unit has so far traced 22 patients but they have not been informed, under guidelines set by the Department of Health, this is under review at the moment. The article states that Alan Milburn the Health Secretary is thought to be deeply concerned about the impact on people of being told that they have been exposed to a disease for which there is no conclusive test or cure.

The Ministry for Health may be able to stop them donating blood or organs to the rest of the general public, but this will not stop the risk of this disease being spread to their family and close friends, who could at this very moment be nursing the patients back to health after their operation during which they needed to receive blood.

A patient notification exercise is commenced in England to alert recipients of plasma products of their possible increased risk of vCJD disease. This exercise is still in progress.

15 recipients who received whole blood products in England are notified (Dec. 2003) of their possible increased risk of vCJD disease.

The Health Protection Agency, Colindale, provides those responsible for tracing vCJD-implicated blood products with tables listing batch numbers of plasma products which have been manufactured in the UK by Bio Products Laboratory (BPL) and the Protein Fractionation Centre (PFC).

The World Federation of Hemophilia website refers to this as "a precautionary measure", "as there is no known case of transmission of vCJD by a plasma-derived treatment product and no one with hemophilia has been diagnosed with vCJD."

24 batches of Factor VIII and IX are administered to persons with haemophilia and the batches are later identified as containing the blood of donors who has been found to have vCJD. There is still no test for vCJD and some health professionals maintain that the risk from vCJD in blood products is only ‘theoretical’.