Haemovigilance - to be integrated to win

Abstract

Blood service is a key node of public health. Haemovigilance is in essence an application of epidemiology surveillance in blood service, and has safeguarded blood service running reliably for over 30 years since the beginning, with a few profound issues outstanding. As the demand of blood service increases rapidly and comprehensively, the gap between blood supply and demand widens calling for better surveillance of blood safety issues. It is therefore necessary to rethink current haemovigilance systems and re-examine the outstanding as well as any hidden issues. Here we start with the origin and evolvement of haemovigilance, depict its proper positions and potentials in the One Health framework, and then from the new viewpoints discuss the major issues and challenges, including limitations in surveillance and perception, and suggest ways forward. We conclude that wide multidisciplinary collaboration at domestic and international levels hold the key to meet the challenges.

Keywords

• haemovigilance
• blood service