NHS calls national blood shortage amber alert

A perfect storm of increased demand of O type blood from hospitals following the recent cyber attack which has impacted London hospitals and reduced collections due to high levels of unfilled appointments at donor centres in town and city centres, has caused stocks of blood to drop to unprecedentedly low levels.

NHS Blood and Transplant has written to hospitals today to issue an “Amber Alert” asking them to restrict the use of O type blood to essential cases and use substitutions where clinically safe to do so. O negative and O positive donors are asked to urgently book and fill appointments at donor centres.

Today, national stocks of O Negative are 1.6 days and overall national stocks of blood across all types is 4.3 days. On average, there are around 50,000 appointments to fill each week. There are over 12,000 appointments still to fill in donor centres over the next two weeks.

An Amber Alert is an important part of the NHS’s business continuity plan for blood stocks. It triggers hospitals being able to:

• implement their emergency measures to minimise usage;
• move staff to laboratories to vet the use of all O type blood; and
• use patient blood management systems to minimise use of O type blood.