Perceptions: Mistrust Seen as Barrier to Blood Donation
By RONI CARYN RABIN
The study, published in the medical journal Transfusion, surveyed 930 African-Americans attending 15 churches in metropolitan Atlanta. One in five said they did not trust hospitals, and they were less than half as likely as the others to be blood donors. The respondents who did trust hospitals were more knowledgeable about the blood supply and less fearful of donation, and they were more likely to respond to calls for blood donation, the study found.
While 42 percent of white adults aged 25 to 44 donated blood from 1985 to 2002, only 29 percent of African-Americans did, according to the National Survey of Family Growth.
“Trust is the big barrier, and distrust is high,” said the new paper’s senior author, Dr. Beth H. Shaz, chief medical officer of the New York Blood Center in New York. “There are a lot of myths that go around; there are still people who believe you can get H.I.V. from donating blood.”
I think that people are just afraid because it’s blood being transferred and because of the rumors that were told about you being able to catch HIV through the transfer of blood. These rumors are causing the people who used to believe in the safety of hospitals to renounce their opinion about hospitals being safe. After reading the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, I think that people should stop making up these rumors and lying to people. What they did to these men, holding them back from the real treatment and not telling them what they really had, we wrong and missed up. They should’ve been aware and if they were they would’ve started getting the real treatment.
ReplyDeleteIn this article I do agree with this because H.I.V. is very easy to get through blood donation now of these days. The only thing is that the doctors do very well at reading the blood very well. They test the blood and so on to make sure that the blood is safe to donate it to someone else in the near future. It is not true that blacks are untrusted because anyone can give you HIV. So you have to just beware that you can get HIV from anyone in this world.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading that article I still agree to what I said. Because they send the blood to the lab now of these days to make sure there is no disease. Now if it was backed then than there would have been some misunderstanding then. Because doctors did not really pay attention to the blood they just did the transfusion.
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ReplyDeleteI think they hhave every right to be paranoid, after all it is their life they could be riskig. Trust is not something that should be given lightly esp. in the means of healthcare. Things are never 100% sure or safe no matter how clean they claim to be or sure. Things tend to go wrong for people whom are always willing to trust and never question what they are doing and how safe it is. While i believe I would never be afraid to give blood due to all the precations given, i believe it's their right to and like I said anything could go wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe article didnt change what I said or think. I think it proves that people have the right to think about what their getting their selves into.
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ReplyDeleteI think that when it comes to people donating blood there has to be a big trust issues between the doctors and the patient that is receiving the blood. This is very scary not knowing if the blood infected. But sometimes you have to take that risk if you don’t have a big chance of living without the blood donation. After reading the tuskeegee syphilis article i think that blood donations are dangerous for that fact that some doctor could give a person a blood donation knowing that it is effected. But now that we do more lab work and things i think theres not a big risk of that happening again
ReplyDeleteI kind of anticipated this study. Most black people do have phobias of hospitals and tend to refuse treatments from them. Anytime that you go to a hospital you most likely will see more white people than blacks. Also, when it comes to donating blood, blacks are, in my opinion, more skeptical. Black people don’t really trust a lot of blood donating agencies because of fear of HIV/AID’s.
ReplyDeleteI still agree with my original finding because it goes to show why blacks don’t trust these experimenters. As we discovered from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, we never know the entire trust behind these medical experiments. Just like with the Syphilis Study, black donors never know exactly what they are getting injected into them which allows them to be guinea pigs.
I believe African-Americans have every right to have doubts, they could be being used. If the hospitals are using the same needles they are helping spread the disease of HIV. Yes it is very possible to receive HIV from donating blood so they have every right to be paranoid. The hospitals should tell the patients every detail. The rate of HIV is already extremely high in Africa so they have no choice to take precautions. They have to watch everything they do.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article of the Tuskegee syphilis study I still agree with my original findings.
I have heard about these types of things from my dad. He won't give blood because he believes you can get H.I.V. from donating blood. He doesn't trust the hospitals hygiene. My mom on the other hand trusts the hygiene and encourages me to donate blood frequently. I get information back and forth from my mom and dad about if it is good or bad. I think I will donate blood because I trust my mom's word more than my dad's.
ReplyDeleteI think that people can still get HIV from donating blood because while there may be control over who donates blood and if they’re infected or not that does not mean that you are one hundred percent sure that there were adequate measures taken with all of the equipment used to withdraw blood. But I think that there is less of a probability to get HIV from blood donations. I also feel as though the health system is not as careless anymore so maybe there is not much of a risk but you can never be sure about it.
ReplyDeleteI think that we should not let ourselves be convinced of stereotypes and have that stop us from doing certain things. It affects everyone and just because the Tuskegee Syphilis Study was something very racist and not all African Americans have and/or had Syphilis.
I think that this article is very informational. I find the information very amazing that a very small amount of African-Americans give blood while a very large amount of White’s give blood. One thing that I am very confused about is why African-Americans don’t trust hospitals. I understand that they think the doctors are reusing the needles but why do they think this? Have they ever witnessed this happening? I feel as though many of the African-Americans are afraid and just being stubborn maybe because of past experiences, myths, or just history. When reading the article on Tuskegee Syphilis Study I became more aware of why so many African-Americans don’t give their blood. With the Tuskegee study they told the people that they were going in an experiment for something entirely different from what they were told.
ReplyDeleteI think that african americans did not donate as much blood as white people is because of the amount of education those people receive about how donating blood is so important. Black people make up more of the urban community and some people are not as willing to go to these places and teach people these things. People are more common to go to a suburban community and express thier knowledge, and that is where the population is perdomanetly white.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading about the tuskegee syphilis study i understand why some black people have trouble trusting hospitals. That is something i have never heard of but i am not surprised because of the years it took place.
My reaction to this article is that these people still have every right to be concerned and worried about blood transfusions. From what i know, you can get h.i.v/aids from getting a blood transfusion. If i am wrong then i have a huge bone to pick with mr.shrik. i feel that these people should still not trust these things because they don't know what is being put into their bodies, only the doctors do. after reading the tuskegee my opinion still has not changed at all
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article I don’t agree with the people that think it is possible to get HIV from donating blood. People that donate blood are tested for any types of diseases or STD’s. If they do have something it is not possible for them to donate blood to a hospital. How would you possibly get HIV from donated blood if people with diseases aren’t allowed to donate blood in the first place? I could understand if people don’t trust hospitals but it shouldn’t be taken this far.
ReplyDeleteAfter researching the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study it makes me more open minded.
Miss trust is a common factor in every part of life, but for those who are fearful of hospital those people are most likely to believe in all the myths because they don’t have the proper knowledge of the blood donating process. I do believe that H.I.V can be spread through needles if not change for every new patient. In a can of blood drive I would believe that the doctors have enough respect for the people and their jobs to change.
ReplyDeleteWow I was so surprised by the discovery. I did not even know that trusts was the problem that caused the African American in our community to give blood. They believe that you can still get HIV through blood transfusion. But they are not educated in the process of give blood.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the reason as to why less African American is not involved in giving blood. With the Tuskegee article where the blacks were taken advantage of for a study and were not even told that they had a disease made the rest of the black not trust the doctors. I think the best thing to do is to educate yourself so that you make sure that you are not taken advantage of.
Anytime you donate blood there is always a huge reliance on the blood not being unsafe. There should always be trust between the patient and the doctors. People don’t know if the blood is safe. Some people though when not having a chance to live have no choice. I think that blood should be tested more than once to double check. As far as the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, I was appalled that they really lied to them and kept them back from real cures. They used them like they were animals or guinea pigs.
ReplyDeleteI think that, that is insane! They obviously have no education on the matter. You can no longer get HIV/AIDS from blood transfusions, they now test the blood before giving it to the patient. Now with the expirement with Syphillis they basically used African Americans as a project to see how it effects them as a race. i think this was very cruel and inconsiterate of the people who were conducting them.I feel bad for everyone's lives who were ruined by all of this stuff that was done to them.
ReplyDeleteI do think it is possible that people can get H.I.V from donating blood. I understand why Africa Americans mistrust hospital because doctors could be using the same needle multiple times to draw blood from people(s). After reading the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment I still stand by my opinion and I do not blame African Americans for being skeptical about donating blood. Poor African Americans were lied to during the Tuskegee Syphilis study because the government/doctors wouldn’t tell them if they had syphilis or not. The doctors exposed a few poor old sharecroppers to syphilis because they thought the disease acted differently because of skin color. I think that is absolutely wrong and the government shouldn’t experimented with people and did not tell them.
ReplyDeleteIn this article I think that people that are African-American are afraid to catch HIV and think that this disease is spread through blood donation. I can agree with them because sometimes this can not be detected so you never know what you are recieving when people donate blood.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this I still agree with the finding because the black communtity never know what is really getting injected into them.