World Blood Donor Day

Have you seen those posters with a baby who urges you to donate your blood to save his life? This appealing poster is usually pasted to announce blood donation campaigns. Blood is perhaps the most valuable resource that we all carry. Blood gives us life and our blood can also literally give life to another person too. Our bodies are made in such a way that giving away a little blood causes absolutely no harm. Giving blood is an uplifting experience because someone's life could be saved with your blood some day.

The UN has officially recognised the importance of donating blood by designating June 14 (today) as World Blood Donor Day (WBDD). The theme of this year's campaign is "Thank you for saving my life". No one who receives blood will know the identity of the person who has donated blood, but he or she will be forever grateful for that act. The WBDD focuses on thanking blood donors who save lives every day through their blood donations and strongly encourages more people all over the world to donate blood voluntarily and regularly with the slogan "Give freely, give often. Blood donation matters." Fortunately, Sri Lankans with their spirit of generosity and volunteerism do this often though we sometimes see advertisements and news items calling for rare types of blood.

Campaign

The campaign aims to highlight stories from people whose lives have been saved through blood donation, as a way of motivating regular blood donors to continue giving blood and people in good health who have never given blood to begin doing so. Blood transfusion saves lives and improves health, but many patients requiring transfusion do not have timely access to safe blood. The need for blood transfusion may arise at any time in both urban and rural areas. The unavailability of blood has led to many deaths and many patients suffering from ill-health.

Around 108 million units of donated blood are collected globally every year. Nearly 50% of these blood donations are collected in high-income countries, home to less than 20% of the world's population. About 10,000 blood centres in 168 countries report collecting a total of 83 million blood donations. The median annual blood donations per centre is 15,000 in high-income countries, as compared to 3,100 in middle-and low-income countries. In high-income countries, the most frequently transfused patient group is over 65 years of age, accounting for up to 76% of all transfusions. The transfusion is commonly used for supportive care in cardiovascular surgery, transplant surgery, massive trauma, and therapy for solid and haematological malignancies. In low-and middle-income countries it is used more often for management of pregnancy-related complications, childhood malaria complicated by severe anaemia, and trauma-related injuries.

Assistance

Clearly, developing countries need to ramp up blood collection, but most of them need financial assistance and technical expertise to do so. Maintaining a blood bank is quite costly. Screening for bloodborne diseases is also an expensive process. An adequate and reliable supply of safe blood can be assured by a stable base of regular, voluntary, unpaid blood donors. They are also the safest group of donors as the prevalence of bloodborne infections is lowest among these donors. In 2012, 73 countries reported collecting more than 90% of their blood supply from voluntary, unpaid blood donors, among them 60 countries collect 100% of blood supply from voluntary unpaid blood donors. But in 72 countries, less than 50% of blood supplies come from voluntary unpaid donors, with much of their blood supply still dependent on family/replacement and paid blood donors.

But many patients requiring transfusion in developing countries do not have timely access to safe blood and blood products. Hospitals need to ensure that supplies of blood and blood products are sufficient and free from HIV, hepatitis viruses and other infections that can be transmitted through transfusion. In fact, all donated blood should always be screened for HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis prior to transfusion. Yet 25 countries are not able to screen all donated blood for one or more of these infections. Testing is not reliable in many countries because of irregular supply of test kits, staff shortages, poor quality test kits, or lack of basic quality in laboratories.

Disease

There is another factor that increases the danger of catching a bloodborne disease. Transfusions are sometimes prescribed when simple and safe alternative treatments might be equally effective. As a result such a transfusion may not be necessary. An unnecessary transfusion exposes patients to the risk of infections such as HIV and hepatitis and adverse transfusion reactions. Doctors should carefully assess whether any other treatments are available before deciding on a transfusion.

Another factor that could sometimes delay treatment or transfusion is that many people do not know their blood type. Most countries adopting biometric ID cards embed this information too on the card, so that emergency services could pre-arrange the relevant blood types for life-saving surgery in the case of traffic and occupational accidents. Moreover, it helps to know if you are a universal donor - O Negative blood can be given to anyone irrespective of their own blood type or a universal recipient (AB Positive) which means you can receive any type of blood in an emergency. However, the downside of being an O Negative type is that they can only receive O Negative blood, which is generally found in only 7 percent of the population.

Future

In the future, natural blood might not be needed at all due to advances in artificial blood and blood substitutes technologies. This will eliminate the need to screen donated blood for various diseases. Scientists hope to produce a sort of "limitless" supply of type-O red blood cells, free of diseases and able to be transfused into any patient. Through the use of pluripotent stem cells - regular cells removed from the human body and then transformed into stem cells - researchers have been able to create blood type O red blood cells. The technique will be tested in live humans for the first time, in a trial running through 2016 or 2017. In the experiments, researchers will test the artificial blood on people who have thalassaemia, a blood disorder that requires several transfusions. They eventually hope to produce this synthetic blood on an industrial scale and make it relatively inexpensive.

Moreover, biodegradable artificial blood vessels that remain free from blockages and are replaced by the body have been developed by medical researchers in Austria. The breakthrough could lead to the increased use of artificial blood vessels especially in bypass operations. However, the concept of donating blood is not likely to disappear even if artificial blood becomes commonplace because of its inherent emotional impact.