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U.S. tries to head off looming blood shortage
Posted
9-6-99 Washington. In an effort to stem next year's potential blood shortage, the federal government recently announced plans to relax certain blood donation restrictions and to create a monthly tracking system of the nation's blood supply. The National Institutes of Health also will begin a program to collect data from blood banks monthly, instead of the current practice of every two years. "When shortages appear to be occurring or we see trends in that direction, the information can be made available to the blood banking community so they can reposition their supplies to make up for the shortage," said George Nemo, PhD, of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The nation could be short a half-million units of blood in 2000, according to the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB). The shortage is blamed on decreased donations and also increased donation restrictions, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ban on donations by people who may have been exposed to Creutzfedlt-Jakob disease (which is linked to "mad cow disease") in the United Kingdom. The FDA has banned blood donations by people who lived or traveled extensively in the UK from 1980 to 1996, which is estimated to result in a loss of 285,000 units of blood, said Bob Ensinger, spokesman for the AABB. To help offset that loss, the FDA will now allow certain blood banks to use blood from people with hemochromatosis, a genetic disease that causes a buildup of too much iron. Blood banks that offer free bleeds to those patients-to alleviate the iron buildup-may apply for exemptions from federal regulations that ban the use of blood from hemochromatosis patients. "There's been a stigma behind it, even though there is no proof that the blood is bad," Ensinger said. If the bleeding is done as a medical treatment that the patient pays for, the blood cannot be used for donations, he said. But the exemption will now allow some of these patients to donate blood that would otherwise go to waste.
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