WHO Experts' Consultation on Estimation of Blood Requirements

Overview

Robust methods to estimate blood transfusion requirements are needed to plan and evaluate systems of blood provision. Existing methods for estimating national blood requirements are either not sensitive to reflect the dynamic nature of blood needs in the health care system, or are difficult to apply due to the lack of required data. As a
consequence, the WHO convened an experts’ consultation to review experience from developed and developing countries and plan a way forward. The specific outputs from the meeting were consensus definitions of components of blood requirement and the outline of a document describing a toolkit to guide blood providers in the estimation of
blood requirements.