One reason why the number of blood donors has reached such a low level is that, in the quest for delivering guaranteed, risk-free, pure donations to recipients, the process has become much more complex for the actual donors.
One reason why the number of blood donors has reached such a low level is that, in the quest for delivering guaranteed, risk-free, pure donations to recipients, the process has become much more complex for the actual donors.
I started giving blood as a student more than 40 years ago. As I remember it, the restrictions and form-filling were minimal. As long as you were healthy, your haemoglobin levels were adequate, you could drop in and feel you were doing your bit to help save a life. The most daunting aspect of the process was the dragon who guarded the chocolate biscuits and ensured that we didn't take more than our permitted one.
Over the years, however, giving blood has become a lot more complicated. HIV brought with it checks and limits on sexuality and sexual partners; then travel destinations were added. Along the way, and for reasons less obvious to me, came restrictions on across-the-counter pain-killers, on people who had themselves received blood donations, visits to the dentist (or tattooist) with an increasingly long form to complete that requires me, for example, to state, on every visit, that I lived in the US for a year in 1983/84. The latest requirement is that I monitor my health for two weeks after I have given blood and report any illness, including sore throat (even in the winter).
Thinking of my friends and relatives, then most of them are legitimately ruled out from giving blood: the younger ones because of their holiday destinations and the older ones because of various medications. I often wonder, when I see the queues of people lining up in other countries to give blood after some disaster, whether they are monitored to the same degree and whether those countries have the same black list of places. Indeed, what happens if you live in one of the black-listed places?
Forty years ago, things were simple. You gave blood because without such donations people were in danger of dying. Now I get the sense that blood donors are seen as more of a potential threat to the seriously ill than benefactor. The problems with hepatitis have obviously made the Blood Transfusion Service very sensitive, but as a society we need to get the balance of risk more proportionate, otherwise we are in danger of driving more volunteers away and having real shortages of blood. My own stopping point will come when they introduce a test for CJD.
A few years back I discussed the growing restrictions with a friend who was terminally ill but who had periodic transfusions that greatly enhanced the quality of her life and her sense of wellbeing. The here and now was what mattered to her. Knowing the benefit to her has kept me donating, but it would be very easy to stop.
Judith Gillespie,
40 Findhorn Place,
Edinburgh.
