20,000 new blood donors recruited in 2016 - IBTS publishes 2016 Annual Report

Monday 9th October 2017

The IBTS today (Monday) published its Annual Report for 2016. “The IBTS continues to supply blood, platelets, tissue and blood products to patients in Ireland within very high standards of quality. It is clear however that like many developed countries we struggle to maintain a consistent supply to hospitals,” said Andy Kelly, IBTS Chief Executive.

“We have very high deferral rates especially in haemoglobin and this has resulted in shortages in certain blood groups during the course of the year. We recruited more than 20,000 new donors in 2016 which was a 40% increase on 2015 but despite this we struggled for much of the year to maintain an adequate supply. We had some very successful promotional campaigns particularly the re-introduction of Blood for Life Week, the international campaign #Missing Type and a much more visible presence on digital platforms. The IBTS collected 128,695 donations in 2016 a decline of just under 3% over the 2015 figure of 132,227. The ratio of male to female donors also changed slightly in 2016 as 57% of donors were male, compared to 56% in 2015. While collections have increased in 2017, so has hospital demand, with the result that several blood groups are regularly at only 4 days supply - thus it is crucial donors continue to attend clinics for the remainder of the year, particularly in the run up to the October bank holiday, and over the Christmas/New Year periods.

“The current Strategic Plan finished at the end of 2016 and during the year the development of the successor plan was done through a series of workshops with the Board, EMT and a number of groups representing staff across the organisation. These sessions provided valuable input for the Plan 2017 – 2020 and this Plan was set to be approved by the Board early in 2017. The contents will then be communicated throughout the organisation and will be operationalized within each area

“One of the issues that occupied a lot of time was the proposal to change the donation criteria for MSM. This was a topic which was debated widely in the IBTS and with the Department of Health. The IBTS organised a conference in April 2016 at which speakers from many of the Blood Transfusion Services who had changed the criteria presented their data showing the before and after scenarios. This data was invaluable in allowing the IBTS propose a change to one year for MSM donating. There were other changes relating to STIs. This recommendation was accepted by the Minister for Health and an implementation date of January 2017 was set.

“Risk management is very topical subject across business. The IBTS carried out a lot of work during the year refining the risk policy, the framework for managing risk and cleaning up the risk register. It was also reviewed by the EMT, Audit and Compliance Committee and the Board. We also carried out a desk top exercise on the BCP to find out if it worked. The exercise was very worthwhile and we discovered a number of issues that needed to be addressed and were addressed by year end.

“There were a number of changes to key personnel in 2016. The Medical and Scientific Director and Operations Director resigned and in January 2017 the Consultant responsible for testing will retire. These contributed very significantly to the work of the IBTS and brought many innovations, change to how we conducted our business and had a broad network of international peers which were invaluable to the IBTS,” said Mr Kelly.

ENDS