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58
ETHIOPIANS page 54
E JEWISH
(810) 354-6060
In the previous week, the Ma'ariv
daily revealed that the Magen
David Adorn emergency clinics'
blood bank had for years been
disposing of blood donated by
Ethiopians, without telling them.
The defense given by Magen
David Adorn and the Health
Ministry was that tests showed
Ethiopians to be 43 times more
likely to carry the HIV virus than
the rest of the population. (0.86
percent of Ethiopian immigrants
carry the virus, compared to 0.02
percent of other Israelis tested.)
The Ethiopians were not told so
as not to hurt their feelings.
No racism was involved, offi-
cials said: Blood donated by oth-
er high-risk populations, like
homosexuals, prostitutes, drug
addicts and even the tatooed also
was destroyed. AIDS testing on
donated blood was unreliable,
they added, because the virus
could show up as long as six
months afterward.
For Ethiopians, however, this
was about the deepest insult pos-
sible. Their very blood had been
destroyed and thrown in the
garbage. "When you throw a per-
son's blood away, it's like you're
throwing the person himself
away," said Esther Tadela, a 22-
year-old immigrant nurse who
took part in the demonstration.
Rabbi Micha Odenheimer, head
of the Israel Association for
Ethiopian Jews, said Magen
David Adom's policy amounted
to a "collective judgment" on the
Ethiopians. Furthermore, he
said, it was "bad science."
In the United States, Rabbi
Odenheimer noted, blood dona-
tions by Haitian-American im-
migrants used to be refused
because of the risk of AIDS. "But
then the Food and Drug Admin-
istration ruled that an ethnic
group cannot be classified as a
high-risk population."
Since then, Haitian blood do-
nations are accepted if they test
healthy, he said.
"Why doesn't Magen David
Adom throw out blood from all
the Israelis who go to Thailand
[which has a very high incidence
of AIDS] every year?" Rabbi
Odenheimer asked. "Why don't
they throw out the blood of all the
Israeli Embassy officials who
were in Ethiopia and had sex
with Ethiopians?"
Health Ministry spokeswoman
Yifat Ben-Chai said that regard-
less of whether they traveled in
Thailand or other high-risk coun-
tries, the general Israeli popula-
tion still has 1/43 as high an
incidence of HIV-infection as
Ethiopian immigrants.
However, only a minority of Is-
raelis have been tested for AIDS;
all Ethiopians are required to
take the test. And the Jewish
Agency's Youth Aliya boarding
schools reportedly found that of
5,000 Ethiopian teen-agers test-
ed for the virus, only two were
"suspected" of being infected, and
neither has developed AIDS.
Asked why Magen David
Adorn didn't test the Ethiopian
blood donations six months after
they came in, and thus clear up
any doubt over whether the blood
was infected, Ms. Ben-Chai
replied, "I don't know. This is one
of the issues that is to be inves-
tigated by the inquiry commis-
sion."
The consensus in Israel,
among Ethiopians and non-
Ethiopians, was that the blood
issue was "the straw that broke
the camel's back" — the final af-
front coming on a history of af-
fronts suffered by Ethiopians
since they began immigrating in
large numbers 12 years ago.
It was also a matter of timing
— Ma'ariv's revelation about the
blood destruction came only five
days after a 19-year-old Ethiopi-
ETHIOPIANS page 59
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