Managing blood supplies during natural disasters, humanitarian emergencies, and pandemics: lessons learned from COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a historic public health crisis with widespread social and economic ramifications. The pandemic has also affected the blood supply, resulting in unprecedented and sustained blood shortages.

Areas Covered

This review describes the challenges of maintaining a safe and sufficient blood supply in the wake of natural disasters, humanitarian emergencies, and pandemics. The challenges, which are accentuated in low- and high-income countries, span the impact on human capacity (affecting blood donors and blood collections personnel alike), disruption to supply chains, and economic sustainability. COVID-19 imparted lessons on how to offset these challenges, which may be applied to future pandemics and public health crises.

Expert Opinion

Pandemic emergency preparedness plans should be implemented or revised by blood centers and hospitals to lessen the impact to the blood supply. Comprehensive planning should address the timely assessment of risk to the blood supply, rapid donor recruitment, and communication of need, measures to preserve safety for donors and operational staff, careful blood management, and resource sharing.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID
• Blood transfusion
• Blood donation
• Disaster planning
• Public health

Article highlights

• COVID-19 has posed complex challenges to the global blood supply spanning reductions in blood donation, loss of key personnel, supply chain disruptions, economic strains, and initial uncertainty regarding blood transfusion safety

• There are effective measures to reduce blood utilization in the face of blood shortages

• Disaster management planning is critical and can mitigate the impact to the blood supply

• The COVID-19 pandemic has imparted new knowledge on the optimal use, efficacy, and implementation of antibody-based therapies (e.g. convalescent plasma)

• The lessons from COVID-19 pertaining to blood supply management can be applied to new outbreaks and other public health crises

Declaration of Interest

EM Bloch reports personal fees and non-financial support from Tegus and UpToDate, outside of the submitted work. EM Bloch is a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Blood Products Advisory Committee. Any views or opinions that are expressed in this manuscript are those of the author’s, based on his own scientific expertise and professional judgment; they do not necessarily represent the views of either the Blood Products Advisory Committee or the formal position of FDA, and do not bind or otherwise obligate or commit either Advisory Committee or the Agency to the views expressed.

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported in part by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (1K23HL151826).