National Blood Service - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The National Blood Service is the organisation for England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

and North Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

which collects blood

Blood

Blood is a specialized bodily fluid in animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells....

and other tissues, tests, processes, and supplies all the hospitals in England and North Wales. Other official blood services in the United Kingdom include the Northern Ireland Blood Transfusion Service, Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service

Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service

The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service is the national blood, blood product and tissue provider of Scotland. It is a special health board of the Scottish National Health Service.-History:...

and Welsh Blood Service.

Service history and organisation

The NBS is part of NHS Blood and Transplant

NHS Blood and Transplant

NHS Blood and Transplant is a special health authority of the English National Health Service .It was established on 1 October 2005 to take over the responsibilities of two separate NHS agencies: UK Transplant , founded by Dr. Geoffrey Tovey in 1972, and the National Blood Service...

, which is a National Health Service

National Health Service

The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...

Special Health Authority. The authority also includes the Bio Products Laboratory, which supplies blood products to hospital

Hospital

A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....

s and UK Transplant, which operates the national organ donor register.

The service was formed in 1946 as the Blood Transfusion Service and is still often referred to as this. The name change came about in 1991 to reflect the move away from a regionally based service to a nationally organised one. The service operates out of fifteen centres, and collects around 2.1 million donations per year and supplies 8,000 units of blood every day. Service directors proposed a reconfiguration and centralisation strategy in 2006, based on the closure of most local processing and testing labs, and subsequent operation out of just three large 'supercentres' to serve the same geographical area. Staff are opposed to this strategy,
and it is now under review. The future organisation of NBS blood processing and testing is still to be agreed.

NBS vehicles are allowed the use of blue lights and sirens (known commonly "blues and twos

Blues and twos

Blues and twos is a colloquial British term that refers to the emergency vehicle equipment of combined flashing lights as well as sirens that the emergency services in the UK and Ireland use when responding to an incident...

") for the use of emergency blood transports. In some cases this will also require the use of a police escort for the transporting vehicle in order to safely and quickly navigate major road junctions. Escort is normally provided by several Motorbike units.

Donations

The service depends entirely on voluntary donations from the public. Originally, Blood was collected from various donor clinics located over the country. In 1994, the first mobile session was held in Elstree, hosted by The Joely Bear Appeal. Currently, Blood donation

Blood donation

A blood donation occurs when a person voluntarily has blood drawn and used for transfusions or made into medications by a process called fractionation....

sessions are set up throughout the country and take place in many diverse venues. From village halls, to mobile collection units (known as Bloodmobile

Bloodmobile

A bloodmobile is a mobile blood donation center. It is a vehicle equipped with everything necessary for a blood donation procedure. Blood drives involving bloodmobiles usually happen in public places such as colleges and churches.Many times large employers will sponsor mobile blood drives and...

s), and sessions set up companies and organisations so people can donate at work. Donors are generally required to be fit and healthy, weigh 50 kilogram and be aged between 17 and 60. However, regular (healthy) donors are permitted to donate past the age of 60 as long as they remain healthy. Donors are encouraged to give blood up to three times a year (once every 16 weeks).

Pre-donation

Prior to each donation, the donor's iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

level is checked to make sure they are not anaemic. The donor will be required to fill in a questionnaire to provide consent and declare that the donation will be safe (for example, stating that the donor does not have a heart condition), and it is safe to give the donor's blood to someone else. The client is also given this survey to identify themselves as being homosexual. If they do identify as Homosexual they are considered to be ineligible to donate.

Donating blood

Once the preliminary checks are complete, the donor lies on a bed and a sterile

Sterilization (microbiology)

Sterilization is a term referring to any process that eliminates or kills all forms of microbial life, including transmissible agents present on a surface, contained in a fluid, in medication, or in a compound such as biological culture media...

hypodermic needle

Hypodermic needle

A hypodermic needle is a hollow needle commonly used with a syringe to inject substances into the body or extract fluids from it...

connected to a bag is inserted into a vein

Vein

In the circulatory system, veins are blood vessels that carry blood towards the heart. Most veins carry deoxygenated blood from the tissues back to the heart; exceptions are the pulmonary and umbilical veins, both of which carry oxygenated blood to the heart...

in their inner elbow

Elbow

The human elbow is the region surrounding the elbow-joint—the ginglymus or hinge joint in the middle of the arm. Three bones form the elbow joint: the humerus of the upper arm, and the paired radius and ulna of the forearm....

. The donation usually lasts between five and 10 minutes, during which 470 mL of whole blood

Whole blood

Whole blood is a term used in transfusion medicine for human blood from a standard blood donation. The blood is typically combined with an anticoagulant during the collection process, but is generally otherwise unprocessed...

is given.

Post-donation

Following the donation (and subsequent dressing of the wound), donors are invited to refreshments. This period serves two vital purposes: to replace certain lost fluids, and to allow staff to maintain the donor's wellbeing.

Donations can also be taken by machines called cell separators, usually in larger blood donation centres located in city centres. These machines use a process called apheresis

Apheresis

Apheresis is a medical technology in which the blood of a donor or patient is passed through an apparatus that separates out one particular constituent and returns the remainder to the circulation...

to collect either blood plasma

Blood plasma

Blood plasma is the straw-colored liquid component of blood in which the blood cells in whole blood are normally suspended. It makes up about 55% of the total blood volume. It is the intravascular fluid part of extracellular fluid...

only, or plasma and platelets, the other blood cells being returned to the patient. Platelets are the tiny fragments of cells in the blood which help it to clot and so stop bleeding, and are used in the treatment of cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

and leukaemia. A constant supply is vital because platelets only last five days once collected. People who give plasma and/or platelets can donate every two weeks, and each donation usually gives two or three adult doses. One adult dose of platelets would otherwise require four whole blood donations.

Controversy

The service has come under criticism for a long implemented policy of banning men who have sex with men

Men who have sex with men

Men who have sex with men are male persons who engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, regardless of how they identify themselves; many men choose not to accept sexual identities of homosexual or bisexual...

(MSM) from ever being blood donors. University students in both England

England

and Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

have protested against the ban,
and University of Birmingham

University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...

's Guild of Students banned the National Blood Service from setting up a recruitment stall during Freshers' Week.

MSMs are banned for life under the policy; heterosexual people who have engaged in risky sexual practices (e.g. sexual activity with a prostitute or intravenous drug user) or who are returning from countries with a high rate of HIV infection are banned for one year. People who have recently had major surgery, acupuncture

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is a type of alternative medicine that treats patients by insertion and manipulation of solid, generally thin needles in the body....

, tattoos, or body piercing

Body piercing

Body piercing, a form of body modification, is the practice of puncturing or cutting a part of the human body, creating an opening in which jewelry may be worn. The word piercing can refer to the act or practice of body piercing, or to an opening in the body created by this act or practice...

have to wait before they can give blood again. For tattoos and body piercing the wait is now four months http://www.blood.co.uk/giving-blood/faqs/

Officials within the service maintain that despite their screening of blood for infections, no test can be always 100% accurate, and they feel the ban is still valid for safety reasons, as MSMs are at a higher risk of carrying blood transmitted diseases, such as HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

. According to the latest statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

(2005) from the Health Protection Agency

Health Protection Agency

The Health Protection Agency, or, in Welsh, Yr Asiantaeth Diogelu Iechyd is a statutory corporation. It is an independent UK organisation that was set up by the government in 2003 to protect the public from threats to their health from infectious diseases and environmental hazards...

a third of newly diagnosed individuals with HIV in the UK were MSM. However, evidence presented during a court case in Australia has shown that allowing MSMs who practice safe sex

Safe sex

Safe sex is sexual activity engaged in by people who have taken precautions to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS. It is also referred to as safer sex or protected sex, while unsafe or unprotected sex is sexual activity engaged in without precautions...

to donate blood would result in only one HIV-positive donation slipping through every 5,769 years. The scientists at the trial, brought by a gay man against the Australian Red Cross

Australian Red Cross

The Australian Red Cross is one of the many national Red Cross societies around the world. The Australian organisation was established in 1914, nine days after the commencement of World War I, by Karen Tenenbaum, when she formed a branch of the British Red Cross.the organisation grew at a rapid rate...

, contrasted the high risk of patients dying from having been given stale blood—which blood services are giving out due to a lack of donors—with the negligible risk of patients dying from lifting the ban on gay men who use condoms.

Legal

A vs The National Blood Authority (Queens Bench Division) http://www.ipsofactoj.com/international/2001/Part03/int2001%283%29-009.htm This trial concerned the claims of 114 Claimants, for recovery of damages arising out of their infection with Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease primarily affecting the liver, caused by the hepatitis C virus . The infection is often asymptomatic, but chronic infection can lead to scarring of the liver and ultimately to cirrhosis, which is generally apparent after many years...

, from blood and blood products through blood transfusions from 1 March 1988. All the claimants received blood transfusions or blood products usually in the course of undergoing surgery, whether consequent upon having suffered an accident or otherwise, immediately after childbirth.

External links

National Blood Service
Save Our Blood Service - campaign against centralisation
Amicus (Unite) NBS section - discussion documents and press releases from one of the unions representing NBS technicians, regarding service restructuring and governance

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