Men Banned from Blood Donation

Donating blood is a time efficient and simple procedure. The simple act of giving blood saves hundreds of thousands of lives. Despite this only about 5 per cent of eligible Americans bother to donate their blood. Every day about 38,000 units of red blood cells are needed. The profile of the average donor is a white, college educated, married, richer than average male aged between 30 and 50 years. Things have changed a little however and increasingly women and minority groups are donating blood.

Despite the need the rules are strict about who should and who should not donate.

In the US the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are responsible for ensuring the safety of blood products. The Public Health Service and the Center of Biologics Evaluation and Research, work together to identify risks and threats to blood supplies in an attempt to make blood products as safe as possible. They state that although blood products cannot be regarded as being at “zero risk” of transmitting infectious diseases they believe that the blood supply is “safer than it has ever been”.

Blood product safeguards and health issues
Recipients of blood products are protected by a number of safeguards. Donors are now asked specific direct questions about risk factors. They estimate that 90 per cent of unsuitable donors are eliminated by this.

People banned from donating blood

People who have used intravenous drugs (illegal IV drugs)

Men who have had sexual contact with other men since 1977

People who have received clotting factor concentrates

People with a positive antibody test for HIV (AIDS virus)

Men and women who have engaged in sex for money or drugs since 1977

People with hepatitis since his or her eleventh birthday

People who have had babesiosis (tick-borne malaria like illness or Chagas (parasitic infection) disease

People who have taken Tegison for psoriasis, removed from approved drug lists in the US because of reports of severe birth defects

Anyone with risk factors for Crueutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) or who has an immediate family member with CJD

People with risk factors for vCJD

Anyone who spent three months or more in the United Kingdom from 1980 through 1996

Anyone who has been to Europe from 1980 to the present.If you have been to Europe from 1980 to the present, you are ineligible to donate blood through 17 May 2004. After 17 May, you will be able to donate blood as long as you were not in UK for more than 3 months, or 6 months in Eastern / Western Europe between the 1980 to present timeframe.

Main Source: American Association of Blood Banks

The list reflects the diseases, medications as well as potential risks that may affect blood products as well as identifying countries where diseases may pose a risk to US citizens through blood. A good example of the latter is the UK where bans have been put in place not only to exclude people who may be at risk from CJD but by also banning blood from transfusion recipients as a precautionary measure against the human form of mad cow disease. The decision was taken in the wake of last years possible case of transfusion-associated variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (vCJD). The result is that the US bans blood donation from US citizens who have had blood products in the UK even though the risk is probably very small.

Further safeguards include blood donation centers being required to maintain lists of unsuitable donors and testing of blood donations for seven infectious agents. All blood facilities are inspected at least once every two years.