The blood supply in the United States and other developed countries
has never been as safe as it is now. During the past several decades, there
have been dramatic progressive reductions in the risk of transfusion-transmitted
clinically significant blood-borne infections. This has been accomplished
as a result of extensive research to characterize transfusion-transmitted
pathogens, development of strategies to measure infection rates in blood donor
and recipient populations, characterization of the dynamics of early viremia,
and implementation of progressively more restrictive donor eligibility criteria
and increasingly sensitive laboratory screening methods.