NoBlood

04/01/06
Safety of blood supply a concern

By Deborah L. Shelton
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

ST. LOUIS - The first people hurt when the nation's blood supply gets tainted are likely to be those whose lives depend on transfusions. That's why blood safety is a major concern of the more than 400 people with hemophilia and other clotting disorders who are attending a national conference in St. Louis which started yesterday.

Since the 1980s, blood contaminated with HIV or hepatitis C has infected about 7,500 of the estimated 20,000 people with hemophilia living in the United States, said Carl Weixler, president of the Hemophilia Federation of America. Of those, about 5,500 have died, he said. Most were infected before a blood test was developed to screen for the viruses. Weixler, 44, who lives in Kentucky, learned in 1987 that he had been infected with HIV from a tainted transfusion. The following year, he learned he had hepatitis C.

As of 2004, about 9,500 people in the United States have developed AIDS through exposure to contaminated blood products or tissue, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 300,000 people in the United States with hepatitis C acquired their infection through a blood transfusion, according to the CDC.

Today, the chance of becoming infected with either HIV or hepatitis C is about 1 in 2 million, according to the CDC. In recent years, emerging diseases such as West Nile virus and the human variant of mad cow disease have posed new challenges for blood safety.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/14238815.htm

In addition, there is a growing concern over the blood transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease which is the human variant of mad cow disease. Currently there is no blood test to screen out this disease from a blood donor.