Canadian Blood Services needs more Black donors: expert

Black Canadian donors needed: Blood Services Dalhousie University's OmiSoore Dryden explains the historical reasons behind a lack of Black blood donors in Canada.

At any given point across the country, hundreds of people are in need of a stem cell transplant that can be used to replace a person's bone marrow or boost cancer patients' immune systems while undergoing chemotherapy.

People of the same ethnic ancestry are more likely to find a stem cell match, the Canadian Blood Services (CBS) website reads.

If there are fewer people of a specific background in the donation pool, those who need stem cell transplants are less likely to find a match. Diversifying the blood registry has been a goal of the organization over the last several years, but still, Black people make up less than 2 per cent of the Canadian Blood Services stem cell donor registry, a spokesperson told CTVNews.ca in an email on Wednesday.

One expert says previous racist policies are to blame.

OmiSoore Dryden, the James R. Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie School of Medicine, says blood bans implemented decades ago are preventing some Canadians from donating blood, and the cause of mistrust in racialized communities.

"When Canadian Blood Services began operation in 1998, it was embedded around HIV and AIDS stigma targeting African communities," Dryden said in an interview on CTV's Your Morning Tuesday. "While being operationalized as a way to exclude Black donors, Black and queer donors…Canadian Blood Services argued that they were just following the science. The research tells us that science was applied in subjective ways, as opposed to adhering to what exactly the science was saying."

For decades people in Canada were banned from donating blood if they were born or lived in Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Niger, Nigeria and the Central African Republic. It was only in 2016 that the bans were lifted.

"This criterion was imposed on the Canadian Red Cross by our regulator., Health Canada, in 1996 (prior to Canadian Blood Services taking over responsibility for the national blood system in 1998), because the testing methods at the time could not reliably detect the HIV-O strain of HIV," a CBS spokesperson told CTV's Your Morning in an email.

Dryden, who focuses her research on Black persons of marginalized genders, HIV vulnerability within Black communities and systemic issues that affect blood donations in Canada, said mistrust in the health-care system by racialized communities continues to impact diverse stem cell donations in 2023.

"It's not enough simply just to invite people… 'Hey, come on over, we want you to share with us your bodily fluids,'" Dryden said. "Especially when for decades, you've (Canadian Blood Services has) been saying, 'Well, thanks for your interest. But we don't want your bodily fluids.'"

The national blood supply has fallen in the past few months, with CBS pleading for an "immediate" need for donors. Recently the organization said winter weather impacted appointments representing a shortfall of 1,500 blood and plasma donations.

In order to address the problem and serve all Canadians, Dryden said "concentrated" leadership that acknowledges previous mistakes will help to heal trust with racialized communities in Canada. She said CBS has avoided accountability.

"Yes, they may be speaking about systemic racism, but they're not speaking about the specificity of systemic anti-Black racism, or even talking about how Canadian Blood Services has engaged in anti-Black practices," Dryden said.

In a statement to CTV's Your Morning, a CBS spokesperson said in an email the organization is "strongly committed to further understanding and addressing the historical and contemporary impact of previous geographic deferrals on individuals and communities."

Dryden says policies and efforts need to be more specific.

"Equity Diversity and Inclusion can't simply be about making it look more diverse," she said. "It needs to actually incorporate diverse practices that account for systemic anti-Black racism and lay out how they're going to make amends moving forward."