Overview

• NHS Blood and Transplant has DNA-tested 77,000 volunteers in a UK-first project to uncover rare blood types for precision matching.
• Dozens of rare-type donors have been confirmed and their frozen blood units secured for both matching patients and potential donor self-transfusions.
• The initiative plans to boost its inventory to hundreds of rare blood units while refining matching protocols for routine transfusions.
• Precise matching across 362 known blood types is intended to lower the risk of severe immune reactions during transfusions.
• Patients with sickle cell disorder and thalassaemia stand to benefit most from the programme’s personalised transfusion approach.