Improving Odds on Blood Safety : Red Cross acts to upgrade testing, tracking

A person has a far greater chance of being killed in a boating accident--as unlikely as that is--than receiving AIDS-contaminated blood in the United States. The risk of receiving tainted blood runs from 1 in 40,000 to 1 in 153,000, depending on the prevalence of AIDS in a given geographic area.

But the long odds are no comfort to anyone who suddenly needs blood. That’s why it was important for the American Red Cross to announce new blood testing and tracking procedures to reassure the U.S. public that it is doing everything possible to ensure a safe blood supply.

It’s been a troubling period for news about the inadvertent spread of AIDS. There was the report of the Florida dentist who apparently infected three of his patients. Late last week news stories revealed that 50 or more transplant recipients had received organs, tissue or bone grafts from a man who had been infected with the deadly virus shortly before he was killed. The three patients who received his kidneys and heart already have died of AIDS, and a recipient of a bone graft has tested positive.

Questions about blood contamination had been plaguing the Red Cross for years and were not related to the contaminated transplant organs, which were distributed by a private tissue bank. Still, the announcement from Red Cross President Elizabeth Dole is particularly timely; people appear to be more and more distressed about contracting AIDS, hepatitis or other serious illnesses through human error and happenstance.

The new program comes in response to longtime concerns of serious management problems in the Red Cross’ regional blood centers. In a series of inspections, the Food and Drug Administration found that the Red Cross had inadvertently released blood contaminated with hepatitis, failed to follow adequate safety precautions to guard against the use of AIDS-contaminated blood and repeatedly failed to report errors and accidents to the agency.

Under the new plan, the Red Cross will reorganize its 53 regional blood centers, shutting each down temporarily to install a new computer system and implement new blood-testing measures. The computer network will run within the entire Red Cross system, which currently is served by 10 different networks. The lack of a single system made it hard to keep track of regional centers and to enforce uniform standards.

The Red Cross provides half the nation’s blood supply. The other half is supplied by independent centers that collect blood, about 750 organized under the American Assn. of Blood Banks. While these independents do not need the reorganization required of the Red Cross bureaucracy, the independents could use additional quality assurance, too. The American Assn. of Blood Banks already has endorsed a proposal that would designate people at each blood center to conduct independent oversight and inspection.

All blood centers should embrace this proposal. It would be another reassuring way of keeping the odds overwhelmingly against receiving contaminated blood.