The methods used for Hb screening of blood donors should be reliable enough for rejecting only the anemic donors and should also avoid unnecessary deferrals.
The CuSO4 method does not give quantitative results.
Has a subjective end point and is inaccurate. We suggest that a significant number of the inappropriately deferred donors could be recovered with a revised Hb threshold of 12 g/dl and cost effective methods like the Hb colour scale can also be used with this lowered threshold.