Blood Transfusion
What You Need to Know about Blood Transfusion
Blood transfusion is a daily practice in the medical industry of South Africa. As such there are a number of reasons why somebody might need a blood transfusion. This includes treating patients suffering from illnesses such as severe thrombocytopenia or anaemia caused by blood diseases, or where a more frequent amount of blood transfusions are needed for patients suffering from sickle-cell disease or haemophilia.
The two other main reasons why patients might require a blood transfusion is during surgery where blood lost needs to be replaced, or in cases where major blood loss occurred due to trauma. In any given situation though, blood transfusion can save lives.
Unfortunately this statement is only true in cases where blood is “clean” of any infectious diseases. Although donating blood is not in any way risky for the donor, the recipient might be liable for infectious diseases such hepatitis B and C, malaria, Human T-lymphotropic virus and of course HIV-1 and HIV-2, to mention a few. As such there are strict rules and regulations that needs to be followed by blood donor companies to ensure that donors do not pass on any infectious diseases to the recipient during the blood transfers.
As you can imagine the biggest fear anybody faces when receiving a blood transfusion is that they might receive HIV positive blood. In South Africa the number of instances where this situation has occurred has declined drastically over the last few years. Regrettably though there are still instances where a recipient received blood that was donated by a person who was in the window period and has subsequently formed the antibodies of the HIV virus.
In most cases though where blood transfers had a significant impact on the recipient in a negative manner it was due to human error. If you are one of the unfortunate recipients who is suffering due to such negligence, contact Adele van der Walt Attorneys. We have ample experience with numerous types of cases where patients suffered due to medical malpractice, and we will be able to assist you too in pursuing a case if you are suffering because of alleged negligence that occurred during a blood transfusion.
For more information on this subject, please give us a call at 012 460 3668 (SA) or e-mail us at clare@avdw.co.za
