Blood Donation and Blood Transfusion: Special Considerations for African Americans

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Unique issues in blood donation and blood transfusion regarding African Americans (AA) in the United States span the donation process, manufacturing of products, and hospital transfusion service. As AAs become a growing population, a constant supply of blood donated by AAs is necessary to support this growth. Nationally, AAs are underrepresented in blood collection, which may be secondary to AAs having higher rates of anemia and other deferrable conditions or unique motivators as well as other barriers to blood donation. When investigating blood transfusion practices, blood utilization for different races and ethnicities is unknown. AAs may receive more red blood cell (RBC) transfusions because they have a higher proportion of diseases that require transfusion. Patients with sickle cell disease are at increased risk of RBC alloimmunization likely due to the predominance of RBC units from white donors in the existing blood supply, but it is not known if all AA recipients experience increased alloimmunization rates compared with whites. In conclusion, there is a need to increase donation by AAs, which can only be achieved by conducting studies to understand racial differences in donor recruitment and to better understand blood utilization and adverse events as a factor of race and ethnicity.

Section snippets

Blood Donation

Blood collection and transfusion are important to the functioning of a self-sufficient community resource–based healthcare system in the United States and in the world. In the United States, approximately 15 million whole-blood products are collected each year from voluntary, nonremunerated donors.1, 2 The American Red Cross (ARC), the single largest blood collection system worldwide, collects approximately 50% of the products collected in the United States. The other 50% is collected by

AA Understanding of the Safety of the Blood Supply

AAs have more fear of contracting HIV from blood transfusion than do whites. Data from the National Health Interview Survey of AIDS knowledge and attitudes in 1992 revealed that AAs do not believe that blood is routinely screened for HIV more often than do whites (82% of whites believe blood is screened for HIV versus 68% of AAs or Hispanics). In addition, adults with less education had less knowledge that blood was routinely screened for HIV (39% with less than 12 years of education vs 23%

Conclusions

There are issues unique to AA blood donation, blood processing, and blood transfusion, many of which have not been adequately studied. As AAs are a growing minority and especially in some geographic locations where they represent a majority, a constant supply of blood donated by members in the AA community is necessary to support this growth. Therefore, it is essential that more AA blood donors are recruited to help close the gap and support the maintenance of the blood supply. This recruitment

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