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'Every donation counts' BLOOD with supply chronically low, banks seek more donors

September 30, 2007 12:35 am

BY TESS HAMILTON

What would you do for a new car?

The Mid-Atlantic Red Cross hopes you'll take the time to give blood --the only way to enter its Great American Jeep Giveaway.

The drive, which ends tomorrow, is meant to shore up blood donations at a time of year when the blood supply drops to dangerously low levels. This is the second year that the Red Cross has offered a drawing of this magnitude. A smaller but also enticing promotion will run through the end of October, giving every donor a candy bar and chance to win a trip to Hershey Park.

The Red Cross encourages eligible donors--about 60 percent of the population--to give blood at least three times a year. Every two seconds, the organization says, someone in the U.S. needs blood.

But only 5 percent of Americans give at all. And in summer fewer donors turn out, shrinking the supply even as the demand for blood transfusions increases.

The result? The Mid-Atlantic region--which spreads from eastern North Carolina though central Virginia--has "less than a one-day supply consistently," said Amy Eaton, communications manager for the Mid-Atlantic Red Cross.

With less than a one-day supply, hospitals may be forced to conserve, possibly by canceling elective surgeries to divert blood to critical patients. A mass catastrophe would spread the supply even thinner.

"One major incident would deplete [the entire] supply," Eaton said.

Summer is an especially challenging time to recruit donors because of family vacations, irregular schedules and other diversions. The situation is exacerbated by increased demand for transfusions because of summertime accidents and natural disasters.

"The summer is sort of a double-edged sword," Eaton said.

But maintaining a sufficient supply is challenging year-round, in part because of restrictions designed to keep the blood supply disease-free.

The restrictions exclude people from giving for reasons including their sexuality, travel to malaria-prone areas, and tattoos done in a non-sterile way.

There are emergency protocols in place for shoring up the supply if needed, including getting blood from other parts of the national Red Cross network. But "we never want to be in that situation," Eaton said.

The Red Cross encourages donors to commit to giving two or three times a year, a pattern that would increase the blood supply to a more manageable level. Healthy people who meet eligibility guidelines can donate once every 56 days.

The eligibility rules are extensive.

Like all blood collection agencies in the U.S., the Red Cross is subject to Food and Drug Administration restrictions on who can give blood.

The restrictions leave 40 percent of the population ineligible to donate.

The rules are designed to prevent diseases that are hard to detect in donated blood from contaminating the supply. These include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (and its variant, mad cow disease), HIV and malaria.

Those most at risk of transmitting these infections are either deferred from donating for a period of time or banned altogether, as in the case of those with HIV.

The guidelines are "based on epidemiological data, and the desire to ensure that we have many layers of protection for our blood supply," said Karen Riley, speaking for the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA.

The center researches and regulates the blood supply and blood-derived products.

"You don't want donated blood that is not pure," Riley said.

The FDA regulations have been criticized in the past--particularly the May 2007 decision to continue banning homosexual men from donating blood. America's Blood Centers and the Red Cross called the ban "medically and scientifically unwarranted," according to a joint statement.

But Riley said the restrictions don't cause blood shortages.

Sharon Pavlovsky, spokeswoman for America's Blood Centers, a blood donation group unaffiliated with the Red Cross, agrees that many other factors are at work. But she said the restrictions can make recruiting donors even harder.

The deferral policies "definitely have an impact," Pavlovsky said.

But the biggest challenge, she said, is awareness.

"A lot of people say they don't do it because they aren't asked," she said.

"It tends to be something they don't think about," she explained, until there is a national crisis or disaster.

Though many restrictions are only short-term--such as waiting six weeks after giving birth, and seven days after an antibiotic injection--being turned away once can prevent otherwise eligible donors from ever coming back, Pavlovsky said.

Add to this the challenges of summer donor recruitment, and it's not surprising that chronic blood shortages are the norm, according to Eaton.

"That's our reality."