Blood Experts Urge New and Innovative Strategies to Address Global Blood Needs

A group of blood experts from throughout the world have joined together in a new collaborative – The Blood Delivery via Emerging Strategies for Emergency Remote Transfusion (Blood DESERT) Coalition – to address blood needs in parts of the world where there is often an insufficient blood supply. The Blood DESERT Coalition’s recommendations were published in The Lancet this week.

The experts stated that in many places in the world – particularly in rural locales – millions of people live in “blood deserts,” defined as an area where there is little or no access to reliable blood transfusions. In many of these places, the nearest hospital with a blood supply is hours away in an urban area. This increases health risks, including mortality risk, for the residents of these areas. The experts stressed that this is a widespread issue, citing an annual 102-million-unit blood shortage in low-income and middle-income countries.

The group noted that blood deserts often arise due to both logistical and financial reasons. “The traditional system of blood banking is logistically complex and expensive for many resource-restricted settings and demands innovative and multidisciplinary solutions,” they wrote.

The coalition is recommending several strategies to advance transfusion medicine in blood deserts, including civilian walking blood banks, intraoperative autotransfusion and drone-based blood delivery. However, the members of the coalition stressed that while these strategies may help address some of the challenges of blood deserts, much more work is needed to advance transfusion medicine throughout the world. “No single strategy will solve this crisis alone; these strategies should be viewed as a complementary set of approaches addressing the diverse challenges associated with improving transfusion access,” they wrote. “It is important to emphasize that these strategies cannot replace the need for a well-established, high-quality blood banking system. Instead, these strategies can have immediate effects on improving access to blood while efforts continue to build sustainable, context-appropriate blood banking systems worldwide.”

The coalition also urged that identifying and addressing the needs of blood deserts should be a priority for health policies going forward. “Advocates should prioritize the identification of blood deserts and address the context-specific challenges for these innovations to alleviate the ongoing crisis in blood deserts,” they wrote.