[Why defer blood donor candidates because of an exposure risk to Chagas disease?]

Various infectious agents can be transmitted by blood exposure, which comprises of transfusion, of which hemoparasites that are commonly absent from European countries but that can have infected blood donor candidates born, raised or having been living in the Tropics. Among those hemoparasites is Trypanosoma cruzi, responsible for Chagas disease. T. cruzi is responsible for acute post-transfusion infections every year in endemic areas (South America) and also, more incidently, in North America. There are situations which expose European blood donors to this risk and the present essay discusses arguments which have now been taken into consideration by certain transfusion systems such as the French one.