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May 06, 2004 

Harumph. Leaving aside all mentions of holidays, as I'm sure you've read all about them by now, I'd just like to continue from today. Apparantly, despite the fact that they've recently changed the rules and drastically reduced the number of blood donors, the blood service doesn't want mine. Something to do with the 3 days I spent in Uganda. Don't they have checks they can run for malaria? I can't give for 6 months.

For most people, symptoms begin 10 days to 4 weeks after infection, although a person may feel ill as early as 8 days or up to 1 year later.
That comes from the cdc website, as I can't find anything from the UK government. Why 6 months? This seems like an arbitrary figure if I can display symptoms up to a year later. If most people show within 4 weeks, why not make the delay something more in that region? There are many other reasons I get mad at the UK donor service but this beats them all. I wasn't even bitten while I was over there!!

Ah well, I tried. I just hope I never need an operation that requires blood, because at this rate there won't be any.