The American Red Cross has been under order to improve the way it collects and processes blood. This order has been available for 15 years, since The Red Cross controls nearly 43% of the nation’s blood supply. Yet, this health organization agrees that has had quality control problems, but is working to fix them.

Still, despite the promises of fixing the problems and despite $21 million in fines since 2003, The Red Cross continues to fall short about blood transfusions and blood processing.

Even if a commissioner of food and drugs attended a red Cross board meeting in January and warned its members they could face charges for continued failure of their services, The American Red Cross have put the recipients of blood at risk for people sick of hepatitis, malaria or syphilis.

The problems include shortcomings in screening donors for possible exposure to diseases, failures to spend enough time swabbing arms before inserting needles and failures to test for syphilis. Former Red Cross executives have suggested breaking off blood services operations from the rest of the organization.

But there is no record that recipients were harmed by the blood it collected. The Red Cross does a great job when testing for HIV or hepatitis B and the blood kept at the American Red Cross is regarded as the safest in the world.

This week the Red Cross has received the results on an investigation which showed that from December 2006 to April 2008, the Red Cross distributed 200 blood products that have been identified as problematic.