Health rule causes 'bad blood'

I just returned from a Rhode Island Blood Center mobile unit, in Westerly, where I tried to do the right thing by donating blood as I have frequently done in the past. I'm reminded of the urgent need for blood each and every time they call to ask me to donate, every eight weeks after my last donation.

When asked if I had traveled anywhere in the past 12 months, I responded that I had been on a cruise in January that included a stop at Labadee, Haiti, for an afternoon at a majestic, scenic coastal resort owned by the cruise line. We were encouraged to depart the ship and enjoy the enclosed resort compound, generating revenue that would help the Haitians working at the resort and merchant shops, ultimately helping their economy. Additionally, the cruise passengers donated generously to a relief fund, as well as the cruise line (Royal Caribbean) donating water, food, and medical supplies.

I have pictures of the U.N. convoy that came to our resort to pick these supplies up (a surreal moment). I was so proud to have helped, as was everyone else, experiencing a moral sense of doing the right thing in some small way.

Because of that visit (trying to do the right thing), I was told today that I cannot donate my blood for the next year (a service I feel passionate about ever since my daughter's surgery). I argued that we simply departed the ship, ate lunch, shopped, and returned to the ship.

But because of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regulation that was shown to me, my visit to Haiti prevents me from donating up to six pints of blood. If you do the simple math, multiplying that by the 3,600 cruise ship guests (not to mention the staff) who stepped off the ship, potentially 21,600 pints of blood cannot be accepted! And that's just my cruise. Imagine the ramifications of many different cruise lines making that same stop throughout the year.

It gets exponentially staggering to quantify when you ask, "What about all the volunteers who rushed to Haiti to help with the devastation as a result of the earthquake?" Is all of our blood, with such catastrophic events occurring, not to be accepted and offered to those who so desperately need it?

As a research scientist for the last 35 years, I am well versed on the CDC, the Federal Drug Administration, and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology just to name a few of the regulatory agencies. I strongly feel this regulation should be addressed and possibly rewritten to allow for the circumstantial visits by such tourists as myself to confined areas of such countries. It's serious enough that we have such an urgent need for blood in this country that our citizenry is called regularly to donate. I can't help but think that the Rhode Island Blood Center is hurting its own cause by not advocating a better policy. After all, the technology today to screen clean blood is a more exact science, routine and readily available, especially since the introduction of HIV through blood transfusions back in the 1980s.

It's a shame I cannot donate blood, because I tried to do the right thing, both on that day in Haiti and today at my local blood center. It saddened me to the point of writing this letter immediately upon my return to my home.

Gregory Bliven lives in Bradford, R.I.