Why We Must Act:
The need for action on this issue is urgent and compelling. Here's why Congress must act now:
<ul>
<li>Lives are at stake: Patients with conditions like Sickle Cell Disease depend on closely matched blood for their survival and quality of life.</li>
<li>Current system is inadequate: The existing blood supply doesn't reflect the diversity of the U.S. population, leaving many patients vulnerable.</li>
<li>Financial constraints: Many blood centers can't afford comprehensive antigen testing without support, limiting the availability of matched blood.</li>
<li>Availability of blood products: Expanding the donor base is crucial for ensuring all communities have access to appropriate blood products.</li>
<li>Time is of the essence: Every day we delay, patients may not receive the optimal blood match they need.</li>
</ul>

Ask Congress to Help Expand the Donor Base

One of the most pressing issues facing the blood supply is the urgent need to expand the donor base to better ensure that blood is available for all patients in need of blood transfusions. 

A blood supply from a broad array of different individuals is critical to patient care. A wide variety of conditions that disproportionately impact some populations require ongoing blood transfusions as part of a patient’s care management, and these patients require blood that is closely matched beyond just simple blood type. This type of closely matched blood is most likely to come from someone of a similar racial and ethnic background. 

For example, Sickle Cell patients, who are disproportionately from communities of color, often rely on frequent blood transfusions that are not only matched to their blood type, but are also antigen matched to avoid transfusion reactions while treating the impacts of this disease and mitigating complications. This antigen matched blood is substantially more likely to come from a donor with a similar racial and ethnic background. Since these conditions disproportionately impact communities of color, there is an urgent need to expand the donor base to ensure blood is available to meet each individual patient’s need. 

Furthermore, the cost of antigen testing to find units that match for these patients is borne by the blood centers that cannot bear the cost of testing all donors to determine if they could have the blood that is needed by these patients. As a result, centers often test only a subset of donors.

Welcoming donors from groups that have historically not regularly donated blood is essential to ensuring the right blood to meet patient needs is always available. To achieve this, I am asking you to introduce legislation to develop and implement a new pilot program that would provide grant funding directly to blood centers nationwide to help them attract more blood donors and to provide funding to allow increased testing to find the antigen matched blood necessary to meet every patient’s need. 

Thank you for your focus on this matter and for making strengthening America’s blood supply a national priority. I look forward to your prompt reply.

Ask Congress to Help Expand the Donor Base

Message

Dear Office Holder (names will be automatically added on each email),