Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is with manufacturers of blood transfusion sampling bottles to improve their design.

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is responsible for collecting and processing blood donations across England, to meet hospital demand for treating patients.

Blood collection tubes are used to collect blood samples at the time of blood donation. These samples are used to perform mandatory and discretionary infectious disease marker screening and blood grouping at every donation. Additional samples are taken from apheresis donors for tests such as haemoglobin levels, total protein testing. Sample tubes are also used for quality monitoring of components.

NHSBT is not aware of any issues surrounding the current containers and is therefore not actively working with manufacturers of blood transfusion sampling bottles, as the current design meets their needs.