Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Friday September 28, 2001
Erin McClam, Associated Press Writer
Two weeks after the suicide hijackings, the first letters and phone calls are going out to donors whose blood was rejected because tests detected HIV, hepatitis or other infectious agents.
For people who only wanted to help, the news can be devastating.
"They're really at a loss. Some of them are sobbing when they're calling," said Thelma King Thiel, chief executive of Hepatitis Foundation International, which has taken calls from blood donors surprised to learn they have the dangerous virus.
Donated blood is screened for HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis and other antigens. Because of the risk of false-positive results, blood that raises flags is sent through more tests to confirm the infections.
That work generally takes several days. But contacting the infected donors - standard practice for blood banks - takes longer, especially amid the crush of donations that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.
Many of those donors were giving for the first time. At the National Institutes of Health, 65 percent of people who gave blood in the days after the attacks were first-time donors, said Dr. Harvey Klein, director of blood banks for NIH.
First-time donors, also called volunteer donors, are generally healthy people who tend to avoid high-risk activities, like injection drug use.
They also usually don't otherwise seek blood tests - which can make the shock of finding out their blood is tainted all the worse.
"The person that comes to donate blood is a very special person. It's somebody that is very conscious of his or her community," said Dr. Celso Bianco of America's Blood Centers, an association of independent blood banks. "It's very difficult for them."
The blood banks share positive test results with donors but keep them otherwise confidential.
Volunteer donors may also not be familiar with infectious diseases for which they test positive. So blood banks either have staff counselors or refer donors to community groups that can help them cope.
"Everybody's so frightened and fearful," said Thiel, of the hepatitis foundation. "They probably had no signs or symptoms. Some of them think they're going to die."
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, shows up in only one of every 50,000 to 200,000 donations, Bianco said. Hepatitis is slightly more common, showing up in one donation out of 10,000 to 50,000, depending on the type of virus, he said. Still, blood-bank counselors are bracing to help more people because of the sheer volume of attack-related blood donations.
"These are people who come in to do something good, and instead of being able to do something good, we're going to tell them something bad," Klein said.
"It's a very delicate situation."
On the Net: Hepatitis Foundation International: http://www.hepfi.org American Association of Blood Banks: http://www.aabb.org America's Blood Centers: http://www.americasblood.org
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