Throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, the NHS Blood and Transplant Service (NHSBT) has continued to provide much-needed blood, plasma and other components for patients.
Although blood collection faces novel challenges, the NHSBT team continue its important work to ensure the high standards of blood donation and to improve the experience of donors.
NHBT also collects blood samples and questionnaire data for research purposes. Importantly, the knowledge gained will help NHSBT decide the best STRategies to Improve Donor ExperienceS (STRIDES). Donors participating in STRIDES are also invited to join the BioResource to strengthen its panel of healthy volunteers.
While it focused on this essential work, NHSBT suspended its recruitment to STRIDES. At the end of last year it opened the STRIDES study again through the mobile team units and now is able to also offer participants the opportunity to join at all its donation centres.
“We have a remarkable population in the UK who willingly provide blood to help unknown people who have suffered accident or illness,” Said Professor Emanuele Di Angelantonio, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Donor Health Director, NIHR Blood and Transplant Research Unit in Donor Health and Genomics, University of Cambridge.
“Even more notably, many blood donors want to contribute even more, by joining the BioResource, which can make medical research so much more effective.
“We are delighted that we can once again offer donors the chance to make a further difference. A difference now, from their blood donation; and a difference to our future from taking parts in the BioResource.”
The collaboration between NHSBT and the NIHR BioResource aims at recruiting 50,000 STRIDES donors from over 70 mobile units and donation centres across England. Just over 3,000 donors are joining the NIHR BioResource each month; this is 180 new donors a day!
To date, over 15,000 donors have already joined the BioResource through the STRIDES study.
Further information: http://www.strides-study.org.uk/