Doctors: Blood Supply Safe From W. Nile
Sept. 3 -- Mosquitoes have been spreading more than West Nile virus in some parts of the country lately — they've also been spreading a little hysteria.
Public health officials are assuring Americans that the blood supply is safe, as scientists at the Centers for Disease Control work to determine if a Georgia woman's donated organs may have infected four transplant recipients with the West Nile virus.
Questions remain over whether the woman contracted the virus from a mosquito bite or from one of the 37 units of blood she received before she died in August of injuries stemming from a car crash.
Concerns have arisen over the lack of a West Nile screening process in donated blood and organs. One report suggests the possibility that blood donors might be asked about whether they have recently been bitten by a mosquito.
Dr. Kirsten Alcorn, director of transfusion services at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., believes this is an impractical solution.
"I think the rate of infection in humans is so low, with such a minimal illness in most individuals, that it would be nearly impossible to accurately screen donors on anything other than them feeling well and not being in an immediate period after not having felt well," she says. "Most blood centers do defer donors temporarily after even minor illnesses."
Dr. John Fung, chief of transplant surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, agrees, and says a mosquito bite-screening process would probably be detrimental to the blood supply.
"I believe that denying blood donation for a period of two-three weeks after a mosquito bite may be an overreaction and lead to exacerbation of an already critically low blood supply," he says.
"The way to assure that the blood supply is safe is to enhance donation, to improve screening methods and in the case of West Nile virus, to go after the source and reduce the mosquito population," he says.
"No one can promise that there won't be transmission of something. This is the current situation, even with very reliable hepatitis-
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