For more than 50 years, the American Red Cross has been an innovator and a leader in transfusion medicine and research. Started as a relief effort to provide lifesaving plasma and blood for soldiers during World War II, Red Cross Blood Services has grown, collecting and distributing half the nation's blood supply and many therapeutic blood products.

The Red Cross has provided generations of Americans with blood products that are safe and reliable. As one of the largest members of the blood banking community, Red Cross is committed to biomedical research and the development of technologies that will save many lives in the future and further secure the nation's blood supply.

1936
Dr. William DeKleine, national medical director of the American Red Cross, obtains permission to organize blood transfusions on an experimental basis.

1937
The Augusta, Georgia, chapter inaugurates the first Red Cross volunteer blood donor service in August of 1937. Five-hundred volunteer donors signed up within the first few days of the program.

1938
Volunteer blood donor programs are launched at twelve different chapters along the East Coast of the United States.

1940-1941
Dr. John Scudder begins the Plasma for Britain project, supervised by Dr. Charles Drew at New York City's Presbyterian Hospital in the summer of 1940. Due to heavy casualties from air raids, Britain experiences a shortage of plasma. More than 1,400 pints of liquid plasma are collected and sent to Britain through a joint project between the American Red Cross chapters in metropolitan New York and the Blood Transfusion Betterment Association, but fear of contamination during the voyage renders most of the plasma unusable. The project ended on January 17, 1941 after Britain announced it had enough plasma of its own.

1941-1945
The American Red Cross is asked by the U.S. Armed Forces to create and operate a national blood donor program. The first request is for 20,000 units of plasma. Instead of producing only liquid plasma from donated blood, Dr. Charles Drew, and his staff at Presbyterian Hospital, manufacture large quantities of dried plasma. In dried form, the plasma has a longer shelf life and can easily be rehydrated overseas with distilled water.

1941
Using a trailer from the defunct Plasma for Britain project, the mobile blood collection unit makes its first visit on March 10, 1941, at the Farmingdale, New York chapter on Long Island.

1947
Few hospitals have blood banks, and the Red Cross Board of Governors approves the revival of a national blood program, the largest peacetime health project undertaken by the organization.

1948
First regional blood center opens in Rochester, New York.

1950
In response to the increasing military casualties from the Korean War, the U.S. Department of Defense organizes a blood and plasma derivatives program and asks the American Red Cross to serve as the coordinator of the blood collections (an average of 4 pints of whole blood and 5 pints of plasma are needed for each wounded soldier).

1956
A small lab to test and evaluate equipment is established in the basement of a Red Cross national headquarters building in Washington, D.C.

1960
The Blood Services national headquarters lab is expanded to conduct research in ways to preserve red cells and platelets and to separate blood to obtain plasma derivatives.

1961
A western lab is established in Los Angeles, California, to develop automated methods of blood grouping.

1962
An eastern lab at New York University developes factor VIII concentrates, which help blood clot in people with hemophilia A. The Red Cross begins phase-in of disposable, plastic containers, replacing glass bottles of blood. By 1965, more than half of the Red Cross blood supply is collected and distributed in plastic containers.

1963
Successful research programs fill the national headquarters lab to capacity, there is no room for essential new research programs.

1968
A 22,000 square-foot building is leased in Bethesda, Maryland, near the National Institutes of Health to accommodate the expanding research on processing and storing blood.

1971
Red Cross research introduces procedures of its own for freezing, thawing and washing red cells.

Blood testing for Hepatitis B begins.

1972
Pheresis, a process of donating a single component of blood, becomes an established part of the Red Cross blood program.

1973
Use of radioimmunoassay tests is introduced for all blood donations.

1975
Uniform bar code system implemented for accurate identification of blood products.

1980
Researchers find better ways to collect and type blood, to separate plasma and derivatives, to preserve blood and tissues, to ensure safer blood and blood products.

1983
The Red Cross expands health history interviews to include specific questions to screen potential donors with symptoms suggesting AIDS or with health histories indicating they were exposed to persons at risk for AIDS.

1984
Within 48 hours of licensure by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) of an HTLV III test for the AIDS virus antibodies, the Red Cross begins shipping test kits to its blood centers.

1985
Immediately after FDA licenses the first test to detect the antibody to HIV, Red Cross Blood Services regions across the country begin testing all newly donated blood-two years before the Food and Drug Administration requires such testing.

1986
Red Cross Blood Services regions implement a surrogate test (ALT, alanine aminotransferase) for non-A, non-B hepatitis (now called Hepatitis C), exceeding FDA requirements.

1987
The Red Cross Holland Laboratory facility is dedicated in Rockville, Maryland, to house the thriving research and development programs.

1991-1998
American Red Cross begins a 7-year, $287 million transformation of Blood Services. During this time, the Red Cross builds eight state-of-the-art national testing laboratories to replace more than 50 testing facilities; consolidates 28 computer systems into a single national system linking the newly centralized Red Cross Blood Services regions to the world's largest blood donor database and establishes a national inventory management system to meet blood needs locally and nationally.

1992
With the Food and Drug Administration licensure of a HIV-1/-2 combination test, the American Red Cross begins procedures to test for HIV-2, a new strain of the AIDS virus, still very rare in the United States.

2000
The American Red Cross implements new deferral criteria based upon guidance issued by the FDA intended to reduce the possible risk of transmitting new-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD). The cause of nvCJD is unknown, but it has been linked to eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly referred to as "mad cow disease."

Finger blood sample method is used to determine if a person is able to donate blood, replacing the practice of drawing blood samples from the ear. The Red Cross switches because a finger sample gives a more accurate blood count reading.

2000-Present
The Red Cross continues to implement the most accurate viral testing technology available.

Thanks to www.redcross.org for the milestone summary.

Medical Update