45Further, the exemption provided for in Article 13A(1)(b) of the Sixth Directive does not impose what the referring court describes, in its first question, as a ‘temporal requirement’. Neither the purpose of that exemption nor the general scheme of the Sixth Directive requires that provision to be interpreted as if there were such a requirement. Thus, the possibility put forward in that question that there could be a long period of time between the collection of the cord stem cells concerned and their possible future use for the purposes of hospital or medical care does not, as such, preclude activities such as those at issue in the main proceedings from coming within that exemption, all the more so since, as the referring court points out in the second part of the first question, it is impossible to collect blood containing cord stem cells otherwise than at birth.
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