3 December 2004
The Department of Health's high level team led by the Acting Director General, Dr Kamy Chetty held a meeting with the South African National Blood Service (SANBS) top management including the organisation's Chief Executive Officer, Prof Anthon Heyns in Johannesburg today.
The urgent meeting was called to discuss allegations that the SANBS uses racial classification in the utilization of blood from black and Coloured donors.
The SANBS informed the department that it uses many criteria to rate the risk of blood donations. These include risky behaviour, sexual practices and healthy lifestyle. Race has been included as one of the risk factors based on a statistical analysis and other research on HIV prevalence. All risk factors and criteria are taken into account in the profiling of donations.
The SANBS said that it uses all blood that is donated in accordance with internationally recognized health and safety standards.
The meeting agreed that the manner in which information about racial category of donors is being used to determine the risk levels of blood was unacceptable. The current risk-rating model needs to be reviewed as a matter of urgency and other scientific determinants should be identified and integrated into the model to determine risk more accurately. Race will not be used to determine blood risk level.
HIV infection in particular poses a major challenge for blood transfusion services because of the window period when a possible infection cannot be detected.
SANBS provides one of the safest blood transfusion services in the world. There is a need to continuously update the risk profiling of blood based on scientific evidence to maintain the highest possible safety levels in blood transfusion services in the country.
An education programme aimed at reducing a variety of health risk behaviours and encouraging healthy lifestyles in the broader population is necessary in order to create an adequate pool of low risk donors to meet the blood supply needs of the country.
Irrespective of race, repeat donors who avoid risky behaviour and lead a healthy life are essential to maintain a consistent supply of low risk blood supply.
Issued by Department of Health
Contact: Sibani Mngadi @ 0827720161