Cerus Corporation is a biotechnology company, which is a pioneer in the field of blood transfusion safety that's developed a process for blood transfusion. The incidence of transmission in the developed countries, U.S., Europe, and developed parts of southeast Asia, is very low, although rare cases are occurring. In developing countries, cases by blood transfusion still remain quite considerable. In developed countries, sophisticated testing methods have been put into place. In the developing part of the world, testing is available on a much less sophisticated basis, or not at all.
Blood then is obviously much less safe.
Cerus Corporation was invited to visit South Africa and to meet with the South African Blood Transfusion Service to look at how our technology could be implemented. In addition, of course, the problem in South Africa is that there is a very limited donor pool, so it's very important for them to be able to access as many donors as possible. That's a situation we are beginning to face in the U.S., because only about four percent of the people donate blood. This technology we have we believe is more comprehensive than testing, because it kills the virus, as opposed to just trying to detect it. When you test a unit of blood, you are only testing a very small part of that unit.