Blood: Donors
(asked on 26th June 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of blood donors have had their appointment deferred due to (a) low haemoglobin, (b) recent travel, (c) activities that increase risk of HIV infection, (d) anaemia, (e) hepatitis exposure, (f) hypertension, (g) medications, (h) pregnancy, (i) recent vaccination, (j) no viable vein and (k) any other reason for deferral by (i) ethnicity, (ii) gender, (iii) age and (iv) other identity markers in the last 12 months.
NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is responsible for collecting blood donations across England, in order to fulfil hospital requests to meet patient need.
From 1 June 2024 to 31 May 2025, a total of 1,734,2851 appointments were attended. Of those, a total of 291,011, or 16.8%, were deferred.
Codes are used to group together various reasons for deferral, particularly the “medical” deferral code. It is not possible to break down the reason for the deferrals further without accessing individual donor records. Anaemia is not distinguished from low haemoglobin during a session as a donor may be deferred when their haemoglobin is too low to donate, but is within “normal range” for other purposes.
The following table shows the number and percentage of appointment deferrals, the deferral reason, and the percentage of attendances:
Deferral reason | Number deferred | Percentage of attendances (%) | Percentage of total deferrals (%) |
Administrative | 8,392 | 0.5 | 2.9 |
Blood Pressure | 1,900 | 0.1 | 0.7 |
Clinical | 8,956 | 0.5 | 3.1 |
Haemoglobin | 173,574 | 10 | 59.6 |
Infection/Contact | 16,876 | 1 | 5.8 |
Medical | 53,746 | 3.1 | 18.5 |
Other | 1,761 | 0.1 | 0.6 |
Skin Piercing | 7,877 | 0.5 | 2.7 |
Surgery | 3,847 | 0.2 | 1.3 |
Travel | 4,493 | 0.2 | 1.5 |
Vaccination | 1,369 | 0.1 | 0.5 |
No Suitable Vein | 8,220 | 0.5 | 2.8 |
Total | 291,011 | 16.8 | 100.0 |
Source: NHSBT’s centrally held administrative systems, extracted 27 June 2025
Notes:
- administrative deferrals are non-clinical deferrals, for instance a donor who is unable to donate as insufficient time has elapsed between their previous donation and their current attendance; and
- the data counts the unique number of appointments attended, not unique donors, and so a donor attending more than once in the period will be counted each time they attend.
This data refers to whole blood donors only and does not include data on platelet and plasma donations. Tables showing further breakdowns by ethnicity, gender, age, and main blood group are attached, due to the size of the data.