Several hospitals have now declared a critical incident
An appeal has been launched for O blood-type donors to book appointments across the country following the ransomware attack affecting major London hospitals. NHS Blood and Transplant is appealing for O blood-type donors to book appointments to donate as this is safe to use for all patients and the IT attack means the affected hospitals cannot currently match patients’ blood at the same frequency as usual.
For surgeries and procedures requiring blood to take place, hospitals need to use O type blood as this is safe to use for all patients and blood has a shelf life of 35 days, so stocks need to be continually replenished, the NHS added. That means more units of these types of blood than usual will be required over the coming weeks.
O positive is the most common blood type, 35% of donors have it, and it can be given to anybody with any positive blood type. This means three in every four people, or 76% of the population, can benefit from an O-positive donation. This National Blood Week it has been revealed that three blood donations are needed every minute in hospitals and there are about 13,000 appointments available nationally this week in NHS Blood Donor Centres with 3,400 available in London.
“We have availability for donors who know they are type O but we also welcome new donors who don’t yet know their blood type.Professor Stephen Powis, medical director for NHS England, said: “NHS staff are continuing to go above and beyond to minimise the significant disruption to patients following the ransomware cyber-attack on Synnovis earlier this week.
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