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Fri Oct 7 12:15:26 BST 2011

Christos:

The problem here in the US is more the required screening for various  
infections, including (but not necessarily limited to) Syphilis, Hep B, Hep C,  
and HIV, rather than the equipment or physical plant needed to  collect the 
blood. Consider the litigious climate which would  result if unscreened 
blood were to cause a downstream infection in a  patient, or worse, a secondary 
infection in said (surviving or  not) patient's family.

I gave a series of talks years ago on the treatment of heat casualties in  
the field, and pointed out that if potable water was limited, one should  
consider using (human) waste water <WEG> to help cool the victim.

That usually got a (nervous) laugh from the audience, and the occasional  
question of "Does that mean if the General is the victim....." My usual reply 
 was to the effect that if they needed to pee on the General to save his 
life,  I'd be happy to testify at their Court Martial on their behalf if the 
General  survived...

sadly, I doubt that line of (legal) reasoning would work here these  days.

ck

In a message dated 10/07/11 00:59:30 Central Daylight Time,  
x.giannou at gmail.com writes:

The  real problem is your provider of blood for transfusion. If by law you
are  obliged to receive blood from a particular source, and cannot harvest  
it
yourself, then you are out of luck, unless you are the US military in  the
field. If in your rural hospital you are allowed to bleed a person for  350
ml of blood to add to the 150 ml of anticoagulant then, after screening  and
crossmatching, you have your fresh whole blood. That is what rural  
hospitals
do all around the  world.

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Fresh whole blood