Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of NHS blood donation services.

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is operationally responsible for providing a safe and reliable supply of blood, blood products and expertise to hospitals in England. Each year, donors voluntarily give around 1.7 million units of blood to ensure that hospitals receive the 6,000 blood donations they need every day, to treat patients. There has not been a shortage of blood for many years.

NHSBT recruits around 200,000 new donors each year to replace those who can no longer donate for reasons such as ill health, pregnancy or foreign travel.

To meet an on-going overall drop in demand but a more complex need for specific blood groups, NHSBT is increasing donation from O negative blood donors, A negative platelet donors and donors from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities. To increase blood donation, NHSBT recently launched a BAME toolkit to be used by Members of Parliament seeking to increase blood and organ donors in their constituencies.

The toolkit can be found at:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i5d5f93ppiqys38/AAB_Q44nwfOiRFMYUx9qKlH8a?dl=0