Blood shortage puts safety measures in question

By Ishani Ganguli

BALTIMORE (Reuters) - On a Friday afternoon in August, a few donors trickle in to the Baltimore Red Cross donation room, filling only a small fraction of the dozen or so steel-blue beds.

Nationwide, regional branches of the Red Cross, the humanitarian organization that collects, processes, and distributes blood in the United States, have been struggling in kind.

American blood banks experienced one of their driest summers in history this year, the extreme of a seasonal drought that is leading some experts to question the growing list of safety criteria for blood donors.

Sixty six million Americans are excluded from donating blood based on a list that some doctors call overly restrictive. The figure, recently calculated by researchers at the University of Minnesota, represents more than a third of adult Americans who would otherwise be eligible.

In Washington's Georgetown University Hospital, officials came close to canceling nonemergency operations several times this summer.

The hospital counts on having at least 130 units of this blood on hand. But "there have been times in the past few days where we've had only eight units," said Dr. Gerald Sandler, the director of transfusion medicine.

"This is the worst blood shortage that I have experienced since I began directing transfusion services in 1968," Sandler said, citing overseas travel restrictions as a major factor.

Many potential donors may be turned off from donating altogether after being turned away at blood drives, said Dr. Harvey Klein, chief of transfusion medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

The restrictions do not faze the most faithful donors, like Towson, Maryland resident Carol Cook. He had been donating platelets at least once a month since 1995, until he came down with Lyme Disease last summer and was excluded from donating.

"I was naturally upset that I wouldn't be able to come down and donate as regularly as I had and I'd have to wait a year. So the year is up, and I'm back," Cook said.

Only 5 percent of eligible donors currently give, according to the Red Cross. And three-quarters of rejected first-time donors never return, Klein said.

"Getting people motivated to donate ... is not easy. Therefore, deferring people who have made that decision, who are active blood donors, is a disaster," he said.

HALF A DAY'S SUPPLY

"Some of the criteria clearly are more stringent than they need to be. And this really affects the day to day availability of blood. It's one of the reasons that we don't have enough blood on the shelf," Klein said.

In many of its facilities, the American Red Cross has only half a day's supply of blood rather than the three to five day reserve needed to prepare for emergencies, according to regional Red Cross Chief Executive Officer Gary Ouellette.