American red cross

Camille Beydon, a French woman who lives in the charming town of Peekskill (north of New York), wanted to donate blood in March at a donation center in Nanuet. But after filling out the form, he was told that the collection could not take place.

Reason: she is part of the population prohibited from donating blood on American soil because she spent at least five years in France between 1980 and 2001. These people are considered to be at risk of having been exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and its variant, the human form of “mad cow” disease. “I was disappointed", says the Frenchwoman, a daughter of healthcare professionals used to donating blood in France. “Donating blood is like voting. It has to be a habit, to integrate it into everyday life. It should be as easy as possible“.

The problem of blood and plasma donation has resurfaced in the news with the Covid-19 crisis. The US already had a shortage before the virus arrived, but the virus has exacerbated it by making collection conditions more complicated.

In a decision welcomed by the medical world, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), public agency responsible for the control of drugs, recommended, Thursday, April 2, the lifting of restrictions on populations at risk of transmitting AIDS, malaria or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, but maintained the ban placed on France, the United Kingdom and Ireland, the countries with the highest number of cases and the greatest risk of transmission.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease has a long incubation period. And there is no test to perform donor checks to detect the presence of the disease, says the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB). FDA decision based on scientific evidence and documented cases of transfusion-transmitted disease“.

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