If you can't donate blood for your own use, you will have to rely on blood supplied by volunteer blood banks or on blood donated from a relative or friend.
Directed or Designated Donations Directed donors may be selected by a patient or a patient's family in the belief that their blood will be safer than that from the usual blood bank volunteer. Usually, this belief is not correct. Although positive tests for AIDS are rare among both directed and routine donors, directed donations have a higher frequency of positive hepatitis tests. In some areas, directed donors also have a higher frequency of positive AIDS tests.
Why Directed Donors Are Riskier There are logical reasons why directed donors are less safe on the average.
• People asked to donate for a relative or friend may, because of embarrassment or for reasons they wish to keep
confidential, not want to confess that they are ineligible.
• Directed donors are usually first-time donors, while more than two-thirds of routine donors have given in the
past, most on many occasions. With each donation there was a chance that the medical history or laboratory
tests would uncover some reason for ineligibility or that an investigation of an infection in a transfused patient
