Notice: More Than 2,600 New Blood Donors Are Needed in Surrey to Meet Demand

Published on: 15 Jun, 2022
Updated on: 15 Jun, 2022

National Blood Week

New five-year Blood Strategy focusses on increasing number and diversity of donors
Urgent need for more Black African, Black Caribbean and younger donors in Surrey
Mass public campaign to identify people with the most needed blood types
Sign up at blood.co.uk or on the GiveBloodNHS app

NHS Blood and Transplant are urging people in Surrey to give blood as new targets reveal 2,632 new donors are needed in the area to save lives over the next year.

Nationally one million more blood donors are needed over the next five years to ensure patients receive the right type of blood to save and improve their lives, with a particular need for Black African, Black Caribbean and younger donors.

The five-year Blood Service Strategy, published at the start of National Blood Week, sets ambitious plans to recruit up to a million new donors and double the number of regular donors with the rarest blood types. This will ensure better-matched blood types for patients in the future and reduce health inequalities.

Most people know the main blood types – O positive (35 per cent of the population), O negative (13 per cent), A positive (30 per cent), A negative (8 per cent), B positive (8 per cent), B negative (2 per cent), and AB positive (2 per cent). But the public is less familiar with the many sub-types that can provide an even better match to improve their treatment.

There is a particular urgency for more donors of Black African and Black Caribbean ethnicity to treat people with sickle cell. Sickle cell is the fastest growing genetic blood disorder in the UK and mostly affects people of Black heritage. It requires regular transfusions – most often with the specific blood sub-type R_o.

Most patients are children, and demand for R_o blood is projected to double from 2016/17 – 2025/26. Fifty-five per cent of Black blood donors have the R_o subtype compared to 2.4 per cent of donors from other ethnicities.