Summary: The National Blood Data Resource Center projects that the demand for blood will outstrip its supply by next year. GAO believes that the Center has overstated the decline in supply. Most of the decline the Center found was in donations targeted for specific individuals, not in the community supply available to everyone else in need. Also, blood banks fear that supply losses will exceed estimates of losses arising from the Food and Drug Administration's recommended exclusion of blood donated by individuals who spent six or more months in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996. The exclusion is based on concern over the transmissibility of a new variant of so-called "mad cow" disease among humans. The Department of Health and Human Services has proposed removing barriers to donations from individuals with hemochromatosis, a treatable iron-overload disease, to make up for some of the loss from U.K. donors, but consequent increases in blood supply would have to wait for changes in current regulations. GAO concludes that the blood supply is not in crisis but that there is cause for concern about the possibility of some regional shortages and shortages of some types of blood.
