Across Canada, a quiet contradiction unfolds at blood donation clinics: Black Canadians who wish to give are turned away by policies rooted in outdated restrictions, while Black patients with sickle cell disease wait for matched blood that only Black donors can reliably provide. Researchers at the University of Ottawa have traced this gap not to indifference but to something more durable — systemic racism, encoded in policy and reinforced by generations of harm within healthcare institutions. The story is not simply one of medical shortage; it is one of how distrust, once earned through mistre
Systemic racism, restrictive policies block Black Canadians from blood donation
Black patients with sickle cell disease face inadequate access to matched blood transfusions due to donor shortages created by systemic exclusion of Black donors.