Rejected for cord blood donation

Victoria Angel, Ontario's public cord blood bank we wanted to donate to, just called us to say we were ineligible. Why? Because we have been to Africa! Flick wrote to me:

That is insane. Anyone who has lived, traveled OR had sexual relations in Africa is excluded. Insane.

After reading about the plans for a national cord blood bank the day before, we felt very upset by this. I wrote a note to the media contacts at Canadian Blood Services. Here's what John Bromley, National Manager, Public Affairs of the OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network wrote back to me:

As for our planning around building Canada’s first public umbilical cord blood bank, by 2013 an umbilical cord blood collection site will commence out of Ottawa Hospital.

This will expand to have collections of cord blood in Vancouver, Toronto and Edmonton hospitals.  This roll out of the national bank across the country will continue from 2013 to 2016 and by 2019, our goal is to reach a target inventory of 20,000 umbilical cord blood units.

This being said, parents in the Ottawa area will not be able to begin donating their child’s umbilical cord blood until this time.

As for criteria around supplying stem cells for patients through an anonymous public system, OneMatch falls under Health Canada’s Safety of Human Cells, Tissues and Organs for Transplantation (CTO) Regulations.

If a donor matched to a patient was found to screen positive for ‘high-risk’ diseases as HIV, the transplant physician and recipient would decide whether to proceed and that product could be accessed under exceptional distribution procedure outlined in the Regulations.
While the regulations stipulate that the responsibility for the management of donor suitability for stem cells rests with the source establishment — the transplant hospital — it is the continued responsibility of OneMatch to recruit, register and conduct health assessment interviews as well as confirmatory typing for these hospitals.