United States: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is thinking of a requirement for blood banks to accept the newest test that can see the parasites that take roots in the blood of donors living with malaria, and it’s exploring the opinion of its independent advisers on the way to eliminate zero cases without disqualifying some people from donating blood.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report which showcased a grim picture that malaria still poses a significant danger to global health. Around 250 million people contracted the disease in 2022, and out of which minimum 608,000 died due to this dangerous disease.
More about the case
In the United States, Malaria is not treated as a major danger to the US blood supply, as is the case in some other countries. However, almost 28 million US residents move to other parts of the world where the threat of malaria is real, according to the FDA.
Moreover, due to global warming and the rising number of American international travelers, scientists have made predictions that the disease has a chance of being spread widely in the US despite several preventive measures, CNN Health reported.
What more have the US official agencies stated?
According to the CDC, although the danger of contracting locally acquired malaria in the US is “extremely low,” however last summer only, the agency also warned that doctors should have an eye on locally acquired malaria cases.
In March, the FDA permitted the first kit for testing blood donations with the presence of malaria parasites. The Cobras malaria test, developed by Roche, for instance, can spot RNA and DNA of the causative parasitic entity of malaria in blood, organs, and tissue already transfused.
Malaria transmission via transfusion is not frequent, but this could occur, and severe symptoms or even death may be triggered, as studies show.
University of California, San Francisco, published an article by CDC that states from 1963 through 1999, there was only 93 cases of spread blood infections in the US and 10 of those cases ended in death.
Another report found a 13 malaria patients related to blood donations throughout the time period of 2000-2021, which were reported by FDA, and 7 of the cases involved other donors who actually met current FDA eligibility guidelines.
Jennifer Scharpf, associate director for policy in the agency’s Office of Blood Research and Review, said, “It’s complicated, and it doesn’t prevent all cases,” as CNN Health reported.