ALL blood donation sessions in York will be used to help make a medicine to save even more lives.
Donors will not notice any changes to their donation and their red blood cells will continue to be used as normal. But, when their blood is taken away for routine processing, the blood plasma will now be separated out and used to make a specialist medicine.
The plasma contains antibodies which fight infections. These antibodies will be concentrated into immunoglobulin, a medicine which boosts or stabilises the immune system of people with immune disorders.
A NHS spokesperson said: “This is great news for donors and great news for the NHS. Now, every single blood donation session in York will be able to provide plasma for medicines to benefit the NHS.
“Plasma is used to make unique, lifesaving treatments and every month. Thousands of people rely on these medicines to stay alive.”
Eventually, across the whole country, NHSBT will recover around 250,000 litres of plasma a year for immunoglobulin medicine. In time, around one million blood donations a year will have this extra, lifesaving use.
Around 685 people in North and West Yorkshire were treated with immunoglobulin last year - and there are around 4,300 blood donors in York.
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