A total of 270 units of O RhD Negative, A RhD Negative and B RhD Negative were imported early this morning.
“A sustained surge in hospital demand and increasing trends in service provision for patients has led the IBTS to review how we manage our supply of rarer blood groups and we are now liaising with other blood establishments to supplement our stocks as needed,” said Dr Andy Godfrey, IBTS Medical and Scientific Director.
“The response to our recent appeal for donors has been exceptional and we are very grateful for all those who came forward. However, while an appeal would usually provide us with an additional 2.5 days of O RhD Negative, on this occasion O RhD Negative stocks actually fell by 0.8 days.
“Since the appeal for donors earlier this month, we have collected 8,893 units which is 1,141 units more than the same time last year but the deficit in supply of RhD Negative blood groups remains.
“The ongoing issue is because RhD Negative donors are a small proportion of the overall donor population which is now being exceeded by the increasing patient demand for RhD Negative blood.
“Optimising blood utilisation across jurisdictions in Europe is now routine practice and blood services are encouraged to have collaborative arrangements in place.
“Preventing any adverse impact on patient care is always our priority, so instead of restricting supply to hospitals, we are moving to following routine practice and liaising with other blood establishments to share these limited resources,” he added.
Earlier this month, the IBTS issued an appeal seeking an additional 2,000 blood donations over four weeks to support the national blood supply as most blood groups had fallen to under three days of stock.
The IBTS aims to have seven days supply, but current levels including O negative, A negative and B negative are under three days supply and O positive (at nearly half the population) is very low at three and a half days, it said.
There has been a consistently high hospital demand for blood over the summer months and in August we issued the highest amount of blood units to hospitals in over a decade. This high demand has continued through September .
In advance of the October bank holiday, it said it needed to boost collections by nearly 500 donations per week in all blood groups to be able to continue to meet the demand.
High sickness levels, holiday travel combined with the traditional back to school demands, have all had an impact on donor availability “throughout the summer and now in to the autumn”.
