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Over the years I’ve written a few articles about how it gets tougher each year for a traveler to be a good humanitarian and donate blood. In 2004 I complained that the Red Cross was saying We want your blood (unless you are a traveler). Here’s a piece I wrote for MSNBC in 2008, World travelers face rejection from blood banks. If you’ve lived in Europe, traveled in much of Africa, or been to any place that’s even got the slightest risk of malaria, you’re out. (And if you’re a gay African, consider yourself permanently banned.)
Before I gave up on the whole idea, I wondered each time I got rejected why the Red Cross seemed so unfazed by this trend. Considering more Americans were getting passports and traveling abroad each year, there had to be thousands of people getting turned away each month.
Apparently they’ve now noticed it’s a problem, according to this new Wall Street Journal article, New threats to U.S. blood supply. It’s not thousands being turned away, but millions.
Without tests for many risks, blood centers have steadily added new prohibitions for people wanting to give blood as a way to keep out potentially harmful supplies. Donors must answer nearly 50 questions, most of which are required by the FDA and by the American Association of Blood Banks, the lead accrediting body, to determine disease exposures from travel, risky sexual behaviors, medical conditions, and medication and drug use. That’s up from about 20 questions in the 1970s. The heightened scrutiny has sharply reduced the pool of eligible donors. In 2006, 12.4 million people showed up to donate blood but nearly 2.6 million were turned away during screening, the most recent government data show.
Tests for all these pathogens is expensive, making up 1/3 of the cost of a pint of blood. The only real viable solution is some kind of pathogen-zapper, a SteriPen for the blood supply if you will, something that will wipe out all the nasties in one shot. As the article linked above explains, finding one that works without harming the living blood cells isn’t easy. So we’re not there yet.
If you haven’t traveled much and are about to embark on a long journey, add a trip to the blood bank to your to-do list before departure. It might be the last chance you ever get to make this contribution to someone else’s health.
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