[leish-l] Leishmaniasis: American soldiers returning from Iraq

[Peter Singfield]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031024/ts_nm/health_bloo
d_soldiers_dc_3

US Puts Blood Ban on Soldiers Returning from Iraq

By Paul Simao 

ATLANTA (Reuters) - American soldiers returning from Iraq (news - web
sites) are being told not to give blood for up to one year to prevent the
possible spread of a parasite into the U.S. blood supply, federal health
officials said on Thursday. 

The precautionary ban was ordered by the Department of Defense (news - web
sites) and the nation's largest association of blood banks following an
outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis among U.S. soldiers serving in the
Persian Gulf and Afghanistan (news - web sites). 

Leishmaniasis, which is endemic in the Middle East, tropics and some parts
of southern Europe, is usually spread by the bite of sand flies. Those
infected develop painless skin lesions that can, if left untreated, cause
scars. 

Visceral leishmaniasis, the more serious form of the disease, can damage
internal organs and cause death. 

The new blood donor restrictions will apply to soldiers for 12 months after
their last day in Iraq, according to a report published on Thursday by the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites). 

The lengthy deferral is due to the difficulty of detecting the parasite
responsible for leishmaniasis, which can incubate for several months and
produce no symptoms or only mild illness in those infected. 

UP TO 25 DAYS 

It also can survive for up to 25 days in blood stored under normal
conditions, according to the Department of Defense's Armed Services Blood
Program office. There are no reports of infections occurring through blood
transfusions in the United States, where incidence of the disease is rare. 

The World Health Organization (news - web sites) estimates that 2 million
cases of the disease occur each year, mostly in developing nations in Africa. 

Between August, 2002 and September, 2003, a total of 22 U.S. soldiers in
Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan contracted leishmaniasis. All recovered after
being treated for three weeks at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington,
D.C. 

Another nine cases have surfaced in the past two months. 

Defense officials believe that the majority of the soldiers, who came from
different branches of the U.S. military, were infected while serving in
areas around the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and An Nassiriya. 

Recent tests conducted by the U.S. military found that more than 1 percent
of sand flies in Iraq carried the parasite. 

Although the ban will remove thousands of servicemen from the rolls of
blood donors, many of these would already have been excluded because of the
military's existing blood ban for soldiers returning from areas where
malaria was endemic. 

There is no vaccine or medication to prevent the disease, and those
infected are banned for life from donating blood.