Is menstrual blood different than regular blood in your body?

Why can't we get rid of the blood infections when its out of a donor's body?

• I have seen a lot of blood donation camps around. I, myself, is an active blood donor. When I talked to people organizing such camps, I come to know that a lot of money is spent on testing of each unit of blood, to find it suitable for further use. Now, leave apart the case of infected blood, but even if they are suspicious about any sample, they just discard this blood. There are many big names in medical industry. Are they working on any remedy to clean out the blood once its out of the body, so that no unit drawn from donor's body is wasted. Most of the time we just take it lightly, saying that quantity will replenish in 2-3 days, and quality in 2-3 months. But, that doesn't make blood a less precious part of one's body. So when there is huge fortune already being spent on other fields of medical sciences, why is anyone not looking into this. Or if there is any and I am not aware of, or if this is not possible at all, please share some knowledge. Thanks Abhishek

• Answer:

  I understand your concern. But you must understand that the people in the medical field cannot risk the transmission of infection from one person to other through blood transfusions. The blood that you donate has to be used in major surgeries wherein even a slight amount of infection cam lead to deadly consequences. There are technologies to get rid of most of common infections In blood but as you know, some viral infection such as HIV have no cure nor are there technologies to filter the blood of such viruses. Some blood with even slightest amount of infection if transfused in an immunocompromised patient can result in their death. So due precautions have to be taken to prevent this.