Miami Herald - Wednesday, December 5, 1990
Herald Staff

The government will abandon the blanket ban on Haitians in favor of more questioning of potential donors about their sexual history in an effort to screen for AIDS and other transmittable diseases, the newspaper said in today's editions.

The change in policy is expected to be announced in Washington by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan, and is likely to take effect in January, The Times said.

In Miami, the change was applauded by blood collection workers and Haitian activists who had helped organize boycotts of blood donor drives in South Florida.

"Better late than never," said Dr. Jean-Claude Desgranges, chairman of the Haitian Coalition on Health, which had protested the HRS policy.

"This isn't a decision they made because of public pressure. There is not one scientific reason for that ban," Desgranges said. "When this barrier falls, the Haitian people will find it easier to integrate into society."

Peter Tomasulo, head of blood services for the South Florida chapter of the Red Cross, said he expects blood collecting will become easier here when the Haitian ban is rescinded. More than 25 organizations -- including Florida International University and Miami-Dade Community College -- canceled blood drives this year to protest the discriminatory treatment toward Haitians.

"Our collections have been nowhere near our projections from last year," said Tomasulo, who estimated that the Red Cross failed to collect 3,000 units of blood -- a 10 percent decline -- in the past three months because of boycotts.

Angry Haitian groups said the ban, instituted early in the AIDS crisis, was irrational and discriminatory because Haitians as a whole had fewer AIDS infections per capita than many other groups. Federal policy from the early 1980s had been to exclude Haitians who came to this country after 1977 from donating blood. They were excluded, officials said, because Haitians appeared to be the only identifiable group that transmitted the disease heterosexually.

The policy of exclusion lasted until 1989, when the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta tried to simplify the rule by changing it to exclude all Haitians.

Under the new policy, additional questions will be asked before blood collection, concentrating on the donor's sexual history in the last year. HIV infection can be reliably detected three to six months after infection; in the first few months, it may not be detected in blood, which may get through screening.

One key official at the Department of Health and Human Services said that the blood supply "is safer now than at any other time in the history of transfusion medicine," and the new questions are likely to make it still safer by excluding not only some AIDS-infected blood, but also possibly blood infected with hepatitis.

The answers to the oral and written questions will be used to screen out people, chiefly heterosexuals, who have high risk behavior and may have been infected with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS.

"It is vitally important that our nation's blood supply be as safe as possible," Sullivan said Tuesday. "I asked the Public Health Service to re-examine our blood donor policies, and on the basis of Public Health Service recommendations, I am confident that the safety of our blood supply can be assured without blanket exclusion of donors based on their geographic origin." Under the new plan, all nine million annual donors will be asked several new questions just before they give blood, including questions about whether they have had or been treated for gonorrhea, syphilis or hepatitis in the last 12 months, and whether they have paid money or drugs for sex or been paid for sex in the same period.

S. George Sandler of the American Red Cross, which takes half of all the blood donations in the country, said research by his organization shows that people have been honest and cooperative with oral as well as written questioning.

Currently, immigrants from the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are also excluded from making donations. They will no longer be excluded on the basis of their risk of infection from HIV-1.

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