WHO Global Forum for Blood Safety and WHO Global Blood Safety Network,
6-10 May 2013, Florianopolis, Brazil

WHO Blood Transfusion Safety Programme (WHO/BTS), in collaboration with WHO PAHO/AMRO, WHO/PAHO Country office in Brazil, and with the collaboration and generous support of the Brazilian Government, will convene the WHO Global Forum for Blood Safety and Global Blood Safety Network in Florianopolis, Brazil on 6-10 May 2013. WHO has established the global forum and the global network as a mechanism to foster collaboration, enhance communication and information exchange among key international experts, institutions, organizations and other stakeholders working on blood safety issues. The forum and the network meet once in two years to deliberate on specific topic/s relevant to the global blood safety concerns.

• Read more about: WHO Global Forum for Blood Safety
• Read more about: WHO Global Blood Safety Network

World Blood Donor Day will be celebrated on 14 June 2013. The focus for this year’s global campaign – the 10th anniversary of World Blood Donor Day – is Give the gift of life. Donate blood. World Blood Donor Day was instituted by WHO Member States during the 2005 World Health Assembly. It is an opportunity to thank blood donors for their life-saving donations; promote voluntary unpaid blood donation; and convince ministries of health to commit to achieving self-sufficiency in safe blood and blood products based on 100% voluntary unpaid blood donation. It is also an occasion to highlight stories from people whose lives have been saved through the gift of blood donation, as a way of motivating regular blood donors to continue giving blood and people in good health who have never given blood, particularly young people, to begin doing so.

• More about: World Blood Donor Day 2013

Blood transfusion services have the responsibility to collect blood only from donors who are at low risk for any infection that could be transmitted through transfusion and who are unlikely to jeopardize their own health by blood donation. A rigorous process of donor selection, to assess the suitability of prospective donors is therefore essential to protect the safety and sufficiency of the blood supply, and safeguard the health of recipients of transfusion and blood donors themselves, while ensuring that suitable donors are not deferred unnecessarily. The WHO guidelines, Blood donor selection: guidelines on assessing donor suitability for blood donation have been developed to assist blood transfusion services in countries that are establishing or strengthening national blood systems for the selection of blood donors.

• Read more about: blood donor selection and counselling
• Blood Donor Selection: Guidelines on Assessing Donor Suitability for Blood Donation

Blood and blood products saves lives and improves health of patients who require transfusion. There are great variations on the age distribution of patients transfused between developed and developing countries. For example, in Denmark, the most frequently transfused patient group (76% of all transfusions) is over 65 years old. In Benin, most transfusions are among children under five (65% of all transfusions) followed by females aged between 14 and 45 (17% of all transfusions).

• Read more about self-sufficiency in safe blood and blood products based on VNRBD
• WHO expert consensus statement self-sufficiency
  pdf, 85kb
• Expert Consensus Statement on achieving self-sufficiency in safe blood and blood products, based on voluntary non-remunerated blood donation (VNRBD)
  pdf, 83kb