India is grappling with a shortage of blood. Of the 100 million units of blood deficit globally, 41 million was required by India alone, with blood demand outstripping supply by over 400 percent in 2017, says a new research published in The Lancet Haematology journal.
Situation in many other countries, particularly low and middle-income nations in the world are also dismal with the report stating that the global supply of blood for use in life-saving transfusions is insufficient to keep up with the demand.
“Thus, leaving most countries exposed to critical shortages”, said the first detailed analysis on the global supply and demand of blood which has found 119 out of 195 countries do not have enough in their banks to meet hospital needs.
The WHO recommends that for every 1,000 people in any country, a target of ten to 20 donors is needed to provide adequate supplies. However, the new findings suggest this underestimates the real volume of blood needed for many countries, and the authors propose that donation targets should instead vary by country, according to the types of diseases that are most prevalent.
Those nations, which include every country in central, eastern, and western sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania (not including Australasia), and south Asia, are missing roughly 102,359,632 units of blood, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) goals.
Around the world, over 100 million units of blood are donated annually, and yet 42 percent of that is collected in high-income countries, which include less than 16 percent of the world’s population. India had the largest absolute shortage, being short of nearly 41 million units in 2017 (52.5 million needed vs 11.3 million supplied), said the report.
“Other studies have focused on blood safety, such as the risk of transmitting infections such as HIV,” said hematologist Christina Fitzmaurice from the University of Washington, “but ours is the first to identify where the most critical shortages lie, and therefore where the most work needs to be done by Governments to increase donation, scale-up transfusion services, and develop alternatives.”
To estimate the total blood needs of any one country, the researchers estimated how many units of blood would be needed for 20 different medical conditions. Taking into account their prevalence by region, the team then estimated the gap between supply and demand in each one of these nations, ranking them accordingly.
Using data from the WHO Global Status Report on Blood Safety and a 2017 Global Burden of Disease study, their findings reveal that every single country needed more blood than the traditional goal set by the WHO. And demand is only on the rise, said the study funded by the National Institutes of Health .
“As more people are able to access care in low and middle income countries, the demand for blood transfusions will increase further, and —without financial, structural and regulatory support — will widen the gap we’ve uncovered between global supply and demand of blood,” said Meghan Delaney from the Children’s National Hospital in Washington DC.
Even now, the gap is scary. While total blood supply around the world was estimated to be around 272 million units, in 2017, demand reached 303 million units.
“Strategic investments are needed in many low-income and middle-income countries to expand national transfusion services, blood management systems, and alternatives to blood transfusions,” the authors said.
