We received a phone call in September when we ran a front-page story on anaplasmosis, a tick-borne illness that can be fatal and is on the rise in New York State.

One of our Guilderland subscribers, Martha Cieszynski, called to tell us about how her husband had suffered from anaplasmosis. She was pleased to see our story since she had known little about the disease.

And, Mrs. Cieszynski had a story of her own to share. Her husband, Walter Cieszynski, who has cancer, was given a blood transfusion in the hospital to help him recover from the aftereffects of chemotherapy. The Cieszynski family believes he got anaplasmosis from the transfusion.

Mrs. Cieszynski said her family had no interest in pointing up any wrongdoing or in suing; they just want to alert others to a danger many may not be aware of.

The hospital has not reported the case to the state, and the Red Cross says it investigated thoroughly and Mr. Cieszynski did not contract anaplasmosis as a result of the Red Cross blood transfusion.

Still, in covering the story we learned donated blood is not screened for anaplasmosis. In the spirit in which Mrs. Cieszynski called us — “I always think the best of people,” she said — we are telling the Cieszynski’s story in the hopes that it will educate both blood donors and recipients of the donation.

In 2010, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the first national public health surveillance system to, it says, “monitor adverse events among patients who receive blood transfusions.”

In 2011, a National Blood Collection and Utilization Survey was conducted with goals that included generating national estimates for the amount of blood collected and transfused in the United States, and providing “data for national biovigilance safety monitoring.”

 A total of 15.7 million whole-blood and red-blood-cell units were collected. An estimated 51,000 transfusion-related “adverse reactions” were reported, although the survey notes, “The actual rate of adverse reactions is likely to be more than what was reported to the transfusion service.”

We recalled how, when the human immunodeficiency virus was new, patients receiving blood from HIV-positive donors ended up with the disease. We asked the Food and Drug Administration about how the donated blood supply is protected and have written a story that lists the diseases for which blood is currently screened as well as describing how decisions are made on what diseases to screen for.

The system is complex and looks, in print, like alphabet soup. The FDA wrote us, “The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Public Health Service (PHS) agencies (National Institutes of Health (NIH), FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)) routinely monitor for potential threats to blood safety from new and re-emerging infectious agents…While there is overlap, CDC has a primary responsibility for surveillance and risk assessment; NIH is charged with basic research; and FDA is responsible for regulating blood products, including establishing policies that reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted infection.”

We discovered that a disease that is prevalent in one area, but does not exist across the country, like anaplasmosis, can be isolated for screening. In fact, according to the state health department, blood donors are currently being tested for the third most frequent tick-born disease in New York — behind Lyme and anaplasmosis — babesiosis, which is recommended although not required by the FDA.

The FDA told us it has “proposed that regional testing for Babesia microti  parasites (the pathogens that cause babesiosis – a disease with malaria-like symptoms) may be acceptable when an appropriate screening test is available.”

While it may take time and funding to develop a screening test for anaplasmosis, we would urge that be considered as well. The CDC says the highest proportion of fatal cases of anaplasmosis were reported in 2003 when more than 3 percent of those with the disease died. In other years, the fatality rate was around half of a percent, one person out of 200. As the number of reported cases is rapidly increasing — it more than doubled in New York over four years, with 783 cases reported in 2015 — it is likely that the potential for blood donors to have the disease will increase along with the number of people killed by it.

Bryon Backenson, with the state’s health department, said “a few” people with anaplasmosis had died in New York.

Zika testing was developed quickly, although there have been fewer cases in this country of that mosquito-borne disease than of the tick-borne anaplasmosis.

In the meantime, we urge blood donors — a selfless lot deserving of our praise — to be vigilant in noting if they have been bitten by a tick.

“If a donor provides information about a tick bite during their pre-donation health history screening, the collection specialist will call a Red Cross medical director,” said Dr. Lawrence Fialkow, medical director for the American Red Cross New York Penn Blood Services Region.

The medical director, he told us, will interview the donor and decide whether a donation can be made that day.

“Usually,” said Fialkow, “we ask donors with recent tick bites to wait a few weeks after the tick bites before donating to resolve the possibility that they may be infected with a tick-borne pathogen, such as Anaplasma. Ultimately, each decision is made on a case-by-case basis by the medical director.”

Another safeguard patients can use, if surgery is prearranged, is to donate their own blood ahead of time.

In the midst of a medical emergency, of course, such a precaution is not possible. We are left to rely on blood donated mostly be volunteers and overseen by a complex system of government and private agencies.

The FDA told us, “Scientists from FDA, the blood industry, and other institutions continue to monitor emerging infectious agents, including tick-borne infections such as anaplasmosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, to help assure the safety of the blood supply.”

We, here in New York State, at ground zero for these tick-borne diseases, would like to say: Keep a close watch.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer