Blood Donation Errors Increase In 2000
June 4, 2001
According to a recent report issued by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), errors at blood donating clinics increased 51% last year. However, the agency and blood collection organizations such as the American Red Cross insist that the Nation's blood supply is still safe.
Researchers say that much of the increase was due to new reporting requirements implemented in order to prevent the spread of a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease. The deaths of over 100 people in the United Kingdom prompted the FDA to restrict blood donations from anyone who had spent 6 months or more in the U.K. between 1980 and 1996. The new FDA rules also required blood banks to review their records for those people who had lived in the U.K. for more than 6 months, but had donated blood before the ban went into effect. Such donations were considered "errors" by the FDA and may be the reason for the spike in reported errors last year.
The FDA stresses that neither mad cow disease nor the human version of the ailment have been found in the U.S. blood supply or elsewhere in the Country. In addition, even if a donor infected with the variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease donated blood, scientists are uncertain whether the recipient of such contaminated blood would then become infected.
While 29% of rejected blood donations were attributable to donors who had lived in the U.K. in excess of the allotted time period, other rejections were due to the following:
- Donor traveled to a country were malaria was prevalent - 16%
- Donor received a tattoo - 7%
- Donor has a history of cancer - 7%
- Donor had disease-causing agents in blood - 5%
-- Article Courtesy of InjuryBoard.com
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