The Red Cross Does Not Screen for Lyme Disease With Blood is Donations
…."When screening blood donors, the American Red Cross does not ask whether donors have ever been bitten by a tick or had Lyme disease. It does state “those who have had infections with Chagas Disease, Babesiosis or Leishmaniasis are not eligible to donate.” The problem is many people with babesiosis are asymptomatic or had an infection that wasn’t diagnosed because they were never tested or they were not tested properly.
The CDC has known for years that relatively healthy individuals infected with Babesia can unknowingly donate contaminated blood. However, it wasn’t until 2011 that the CDC set a standard for surveillance and made babesiosis a reportable illness.
Unfortunately, only 31 states have implemented a system for reporting Babesia infections. Also in 2011, the CDC published a retrospective study showing 159 cases of babesiosis contracted by blood transfusions, with 70% of those infections occurring after the year 2000, resulting in at least 12 deaths."…..
https://www.lymedisease.org/lyme-sci-babesia-and-the-blood-supply/#:~:text=When%20screening%20blood%20donors%2C%20the,tick%20or%20had%20Lyme%20disease.