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Blood substitute produced from cows offers hope to Aids-hit Africa

By Tim Butcher in Johannesburg

A HUMAN blood substitute manufactured from the blood of cows could help alleviate the effects of Africa's Aids epidemic, it was claimed yesterday.

With the continent registering the world's highest levels of HIV infection, the amount of non-infected blood available to doctors there is shrinking, with a consequent increase in deaths from anaemia and other blood diseases.

Backers of Hemopure, a biological drug derived from bovine blood, said the product can save lives across the continent by providing doctors for the first time with a safe, man-made substitute for blood. Their claim was supported by the South African government which this week became the first in the world to approve Hemopure.

America and the European Commission are expected to join it this year. Experts said that following the approval granted to the product by South Africa, most other African nations would begin to use it within the next few years.

Hemopure is more robust than donated human blood, which has to be refrigerated, lasts only 42 days and has to be matched with the blood type of the recipient. The new substance, designed and manufactured by an American firm, Biopure, for distribution in South Africa by the health-care firm Netcare, lasts two years, is stored at room temperature and is not dependent on blood type matching.

It is injected intravenously and works by delivering oxygen efficiently from the lungs to all parts of the body - normally the job of red blood cells. In diseases such as anaemia, which reduce the number of red blood cells, Hemopure can save lives.

Dr Richard Friedland of Netcare said: "Hemopure arrives at a critical juncture in the history of medicine and surgery in the world, but more particularly in South Africa and Africa." The apparent robustness of the new drug is particularly valuable in some of South Africa's poorer rural areas, where there is limited refrigeration.

Scientists have been working on Hemopure for 17 years. Twenty rounds of clinical trials on human patients have been held in America and Europe to ensure there is no contamination from the bovine source of the molecules that are used in its manufacture.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2001

Answers

...And if there is an outbreak of BSE in Africa, guess we'll know from whence it came.

Dennis

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2001