Therefore, this website comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of the use of blood products and transfusion practices need to be established. As the evidence base for transfusion medicine advances, there is an increasing need to ensure that important new research is implemented and that practices which are shown to be less effective (or cost-inefficient or inappropriate) are discontinued. Many of the methods used to facilitate change in clinical behaviour are familiar to hospital health care workers in the field of transfusion medicine. But evidence remains for the wide variation in proportion of the population

transfused, from 6.9% in Sweden to 19% in the US. This variation which must include uncertainty in optimal transfusion practice is marked between resource-rich and buy LBH589 resource-limited countries. Additional commercial factors apply for plasma

collection and fractionation. With merging and vertical consolidation, a more limited number of plasma fractionators not only control the processing of plasma into medicinal products but also directly control the collection of source plasma through their plasma centers in different countries. The commitment by national governments to self-sufficiency in safe blood and blood products based on VNRBD, and a coordinated, integrated and collaborative approach to policy development and planning are prerequisites for ensuring the implementation of fully effective national blood systems. It is recognized that the implementation of a policy for self-sufficiency in blood and blood products generally follows a stepwise progression in scope, from whole enough blood transfusions towards blood components for transfusion and further towards plasma fractionation, aligned to the state of development of the national health system. Achieving self-sufficiency in the supply of blood and blood products from VNRBD and ensuring the security of that supply are important national goals and countries may set different timelines in the achievement of these goals, depending on their health system development. The author

has not supplied their declaration of conflict of interest. The writer acknowledges the ongoing work of the WHO task group working on the ‘WHO global report on blood safety and self-sufficiency in blood and blood products’. “
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