The shortage of blood stocks, particularly group O red cells, remains acute, and the NHS’s amber alert remains in place. Pharmacies have a role to play in encouraging more blood donors, says Dr Avinash Hari Narayanan, clinical lead at the London Medical Laboratory

The NHS continues to appeal for people with O-type blood to donate, after it declared an amber alert for group O red cells, positive and negative, on 25 July. Stock of O negative blood dropped as low as 1.6 days, and at the time of writing (7 August) remain at just 4.6 days, uncomfortably under the 6-day minimum target.

The amber alert means that shortages are impacting on clinical activities. The alert was declared following a gradual drop in blood donations and a concerning cyber-attack on one of the NHS’ key blood-testing partners in London.

Remind patients that O negative blood is known as the ‘universal blood type’, because it is safe for all patients to receive in a transfusion when the patient's blood type is unknown. It is safe because it does not have any A, B or RhD antigens on the surface of the cells and is compatible with every other ABO and RhD blood group. This is why stocks of this blood group are so critical.

In terms of encouraging blood donors, community pharmacies can have a major role in signposting where to find information on the how, where and whys of blood donation.

Currently, only around one in 25 UK adults are blood donors, even though most people are able to give blood. In an ideal world many more people would be donors, particularly in the case of rarer groups such as AB negative, AB positive (which applies to only 2% of the UK population) and B negative (again only 2%).

Anyone aged between 17 and 65 who is fit and healthy and weighs between 50kg (7 stone 12lb) and 158kg (25 stone) can be a blood donor. People older than 65 may be able to continue to give blood providing they have done so previously. Men can give blood every 12 weeks and women can give blood every 16 weeks. This is because men generally have higher iron levels than women.

There is a simple to use website that pharmacists can advise people to visit to check their eligibility and sign up to donate.

Recent research has revealed that less than 50% of people know their own blood group.

In an emergency, knowing what blood type you are can be vital. For example, if a group A person receives blood from a group B donor, then the giver’s anti-A antibodies will attack the receiver’s group A cells. Group B blood must never be given to someone who has group A blood and vice versa, to ensure that donors and recipients are a match when blood is transfused. The easiest way for a person to learn their blood group is by donating. It’s a virtuous circle.

Another aspect to this shortage is impact of the ransomware attack on the pathology testing organisation Synnovis, a partnership between Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospitals NHS Trust and Synlab. More than 3,000 hospital and GP appointments were disrupted by the attack and problems are set to continue until the autumn.

This attack, and the later Microsoft Windows outage - linked to an update by the third-party cybersecurity company CrowdStrike - highlight how vulnerable pharmacy services, and indeed NHS services, can be to sudden IT issues, and the subsequent impact on services.

At such times, the last thing needed to exacerbate the situation further is low blood stock levels.

The NHS Blood and Transport service has now also said they are looking for more blood donors with A negative, A positive and AB negative blood to change to platelet donation, with a target of an additional 3,500 people willing to do so. One platelet donation can help up to 12 children with cancer.

We can all play our part in encouraging people to donate, and perhaps even consider donating ourselves.