Abstract
This millennium, we have seen the emergence of new infectious diseases. The West Nile virus (WNV) was first detected in North America in the summer of 1999; SARS became a world health emergency in winter/spring 2002/2003; and an outbreak of the monkeypox virus, the first in North America, was detected in the spring of 2003.1 The emergence of these new infectious diseases raised concerns about the safety of our blood supply. More than 20 million units of blood components are transfused into approximately 4 million people yearly in the United States.2 It has been repeatedly stated that the current United States blood supply is the safest it has ever been. This has been accomplished by careful elimination of high-risk donors through the donor questionnaire and by advances in serologic and nucleic acid testing (NAT). Because the transmission frequency of infectious agents classically associated with transfusion, such as HIV and HCV, has markedly decreased, new viral agents and non-viral agents have received more attention.
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