It’s that time of year again… always a shortage of blood around holiday times…
If you can donate… here’s how to find a place near to where you are…
Have things changed? We were given to understand that anyone from UK was barred from donating because of Mad Cow disease.
They will still take our organs though.
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Both I and OH are still banned from giving blood because of having lived in the UK at any time from 1980 to 1996 during the maddest of cow diseases and the risk of transmission of the dreaded prion.
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France still continues to say that they didn’t have the disease!
Yes, the dumbest of dumb policies still in existence (unless things have changed since last year).
/SARCASM ON
Here have my eye, or my heart, and…ooh wait, what are all those blood vessels ? Anyone spot a prion anywhere ?
/SARCASM OFF
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And I well remember the sloppy checks on my lorry when returning at Calais each time. A wheel wash filled with straw soaked in disinfectant which had long been splashed dry by the time I got there with my 10 wheels. 
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Yes, we were too and the children at school because we lived in the UK during that specified period too. Dam stupid rule nowadays, mad cow disease not been around for ages and they had it here too.
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So drain the under 25´s dry!
I used to donate when i lived in Germany but stopped when a collegue of mine, who worked as a volunteer for the Deutsche Rote Kreuz said that there was excess supplies and that the DRK would sell the blood donated on. I only support the MSF now.
Oh, that’s rubbish… I used to donate regularly back in the UK and always intended to start doing so in France too. Guess that’s put a stop to that 
Did you get the comfort package when you gave blood? In our local Bavarian town at the time, we were always given a box of goodies as we left the Red Cross tent - I found that quite odd in comparison to the UK, where you don’t feel that you’ve been bribed for making a donation 
Nah at the most you got a coffe and or a heisswurst.
Do you not get a cup of tea and a biscuit any more in Blighty?
I watched Hancock’s half hour on the subject last night ‘a pint, a pint? 
that’s very nearly an armful.’
Hilarious still and nice to see some old faces, including of course the very lovely June Whitfield. 
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They always asked you the same questions instead if asking if anything had changed since the last donation.
I’d have preferred a hot weisswurst instead of a packet of ground coffee, jam, some sweets and biscuits 
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I was curious
Les contre-indications au don de sang peuvent être permanentes ou temporaires. La dernière actualisation de ces contre-indications a été établie par l’arrêté du 11 janvier 2022.
Les contre-indications permanentes concernent les infections actives connues pour être transmissibles par le sang (hépatites virales, syphilis, infection par le VIH ou par le HTLV, maladie de Chagas, paludisme) ; des situations d’exposition à des agents transmissibles non détectables tels que le prion (séjours de plus d’une année cumulée au Royaume-Uni entre 1980 et 1996,
This is from https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/don-du-sang/quelles-sont-les-contre-indications-au-don-de-sang#:~:text=Les%20contre-indications%20permanentes%20concernent,le%20prion%20(s%C3%A9jours%20de%20plus
Which is essentially what RicePudding said.
And thats the official notice.
Hopefully, whoever could give blood… has done so… it is such a worthy cause (in my opinion).
I went along with a group of fellow students because we had been led to believe that a nurse would hold our hand…