IBTS publishes 2013 Annual Report – 4% drop in donations in 2013

The Irish Blood Transfusion Service launched its 2013 Annual Report today (Tuesday).  Donations in 2013 fell by just over 4% compared to the previous year.

“The use of blood and platelets has continued to decline which has serious impact on our income. In 2013, 82,697 donors gave 135,547 donations.  This compares to 85,762 donors giving 141,350 donations in 2012, a drop of just over 4%.

“While the IBTS has always encouraged appropriate use of our products the continued decline has occurred much more quickly than we expected especially in red cells. However, we know from our European colleagues that this is a trend that is happening throughout Europe. It is unclear what the exact reasons are but undoubtedly some of them are less wastage, improved surgical techniques, reviewing at hospital level of transfusion practice and less elective surgery taking place due to the cutbacks in health spending.

“This trend looks like it will continue over the next few years and this poses a major challenge to IBTS to reduce costs even further. While there may be some scope for further reduction in costs this will not be sufficient to meet the expected reduction in income”, said IBTS Chief Executive, Andy Kelly,

IBTS Chairperson Professor Anthony Staines outlined the importance of the Change Agenda for the IBTS.  “In 2012, the IBTS moved to single site testing as part of a larger programme of structural reform and cost saving. The next step in this programme is the move to single site processing of blood and blood products at the National Blood Centre in Dublin. This will take about 18 months to implement, and will be linked to many other changes, including a much larger stock holding and dispatch operation in Cork.

“We have recently established a formal link with the GAA and we visited every county board, and as many clubs as possible, to make this link real. We will encourage those active in the GAA to donate, or to support others in donating.  The aim of this partnership is to have clinic attendance nationally of 12,000 – 15,000 donors per year from the GAA community” he added.

The Chief Executive, Andy Kelly said that the IBTS published its Strategic Plan 2013 - 2016 in June and a presentation was made in all Centres on the main elements of the Plan. “We used the balanced Scorecard methodology for the first time in developing this Plan. We will review progress each quarter to ensure that we are maintaining our focus on the targets that we have set ourselves.

“We had to revert to the levels of Hb in the Directive from 30th September 2013. This was a significant challenge but through the work of a multi-disciplinary team we introduced a series of measures that allowed us meet to implement the higher levels of Hb and maintain supply. We continued our commitment to haemochromatosis patients by opening our second clinic in D'Olier Street in August. While progress has been slow this service is much needed and in time will deliver a proportion of blood to the national supply. A further clinic opened in our Cork Centre in January of this year.

The core function of the IBTS is to deliver a consistent safe blood supply. During the Summer months it is challenging to collect sufficient donations. Therefore, I would urge people to continue to donate and ensure that we can meet patient needs at this time.

ENDS

Note to Editors

·         The IBTS needs to collect 3,000 donations a week

·         Blood lasts just 35 days. Platelets and Neonatal blood lasts between 5 and 7 days.

·         IBTS aims to hold about 7 days supply of blood at any given time

·         47% of the population are O positive

·         8% of the population are O negative but this blood groups represents 14% of all blood used.

·         Just 3% of the eligible population give blood

·         Donors give on average 1.6 times a year. They may be able to donate up to 4 times a year.