At a glance
Current policy
Rabies is a rare but very serious disease that affects the brain and nerves. People usually get rabies from the bite or scratch of an infected mammal. There is no test to diagnose rabies before symptoms start, and once symptoms begin, it is almost always fatal. Rabies can also spread through blood transfusions or organ transplants. This happened most recently in 2024. In April 2025, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) directed the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to find ways to lower the chance that a person will get a donated organ that has rabies. The OPTN is updating policies and collecting more information to better identify when an organ donor may have rabies.
Presentation
View presentation (PDF - 156 KB)
Proposed changes
- Create screening criteria (questions) to help identify if a living or deceased organ donor may have come in contact with and could have rabies
- If any risk of rabies is found from screening the donor, then organ procurement organizations (OPOs) and living donor transplant programs must contact the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for additional help in reviewing the risk
- Require transplant programs to inform transplant candidates when an organ being offered has any known risk of having rabies
- Require recipients of organs at risk for rabies to be monitored after transplant and given post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) when needed
Anticipated impact
- What it's expected to do
- Help keep patients safe by lowering the risk of getting rabies from an organ transplant
- Provide standard criteria (questions) to use to review an organ donor’s risk of exposure to rabies
- Require transplant programs to tell transplant candidates of possible rabies exposure risk when offered potentially affected organs
- What it won't do
- It will not automatically prevent someone from being an organ donor just because there is the possibility that they may have been exposed to rabies
Terms to know
- Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP): Any preventative medical treatment started after exposure to a pathogen, like rabies, to prevent the infection from occurring.
- Rabies: A deadly viral disease affecting the brain and nervous system.
Read the full proposal (PDF - 557 KB)
Submit a comment
Please submit all comments via email to OPTNWeb@hrsa.gov. Comments will be posted on this page. Please share in your email if you would like your comment published anonymously.