President's foreword to the Annual Report 2023-2024
Michael Busch, ISBT President
It is a great pleasure to share with you the Annual Report of the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) for 2023-24. I hope you will enjoy reading about how by working together we are continuing ISBT’s critical scientific and educational mission around the world.
Over the past year, we have undertaken a wide range of activities, shared ideas, strengthened existing collaborations and established new ones, and supported each other on many research and educational initiatives. Our Board, Standing Committees, Working Parties (WPs), Transfusion Practitioners network, Young Professionals Council, Vox Sanguinis editorial group and reviewers, trainers and educators, clinicians, scientists, and researchers, have all been very active, supported by the ISBT Central Office (CO) team. It's impossible to cover all of the Society’s activities in this foreword, but you can read more about the work of the ISBT Board, standing committees and WPs in this report.
In 2023 many of us shared the successful return to in person meetings at the ISBT Regional Congresses in Gothenburg, Sweden in June and Cape Town, South Africa in November. The creativity and hard work of Local Organizing Committees (LOCs), in collaboration with the ISBT Scientific Secretary (Jason Acker), Vice Presidents, CO staff and MCI, was rewarded by accolades from many attendees throughout the congresses and formal feedback from surveys of speakers, senior and junior scientific participants, and our 15 Corporate Partners (CPs). The commercial exhibitions were outstanding and well attended, as were the congress parties at unique venues with local themes and entertainment.
The success of these regional congresses was very gratifying and reaffirmed the value to ISBT membership of convening two regional congresses during odd years (an international congress is held in June in even years, with the 2024 Congress in Barcelona). The society should be aware that after the success of virtual meetings during the pandemic (2020-2022) and considering the many factors involved in organizing and executing two regional congresses, the ISBT Board conducted a careful analysis and spent significant time over the past two years considering moving to single congresses each year. Factors that were carefully evaluated included: experience of other societies that convene single meetings each year, including AABB, ASH and many national and regional blood transfusion societies that are affiliated with ISBT; perspectives of delegates, CPs and exhibitors; perspectives of membership in different regions, and particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) on the value of the non-European regional congresses which enable attendance by local LMIC participants with fewer resources for travelling to international congresses; financial considerations for the society; workload on the CO staff; and impact on the environment.
“At the meeting in Cape Town the ISBT Board unanimously voted to continue with two regional meetings in odd years.”
This decision was based in great part on the outstanding success of the Gothenburg and Cape Town congresses and our society’s fundamental commitment to global support of research and education,
including in LMICs. ISBT continues to also support other educational events internationally through the ISBT Academy, including two ISBT ‘’Highlights Days’’ in 2023, in Macedonia and India.
ISBT celebrated World Blood Donor Day, hosted by Algeria in 2023, represented by Shirley Owusu-Ofori, ISBT Regional Director for Africa, and the Clinical Transfusion WP ran a successful WBDD social media campaign. ISBT is a society in official relations with the World Health Organization (WHO) since 1955. We were pleased to support WHO, the Ministry of Health and the National Blood Center in Algeria in recognising the contributions of volunteer blood donors: without blood donors, there would be no transfusions for patients who need them! ISBT supports the implementation of the WHO "Action framework to advance universal access to safe, effective and quality-assured blood products”. In 2023, examples of work to support progress with ISBT/WHO’s triennial 2022-2024 plan included:
- Members of the ISBT Haemovigilance WP developed of tools and resources for implementation of Haemovigilance systems, now hosted on the ISBT website
- The ISBT WP on Global Blood Safety (GBS) and WHO formalized the International Coalition for Safe Plasma Proteins (ICSPP) to advance access to safe plasma proteins in Low- and Middle- Income Countries (LMIC). ICSPP was established to address the global insufficiency of plasma-derived medicinal products that are unavailable or unaffordable in many LMIC. Through its projects in LMIC, the ICSPP seeks to reverse the wastage of domestic plasma that could be used, when meeting appropriate quality standards, either in industrial fractionation or initially locally to prepare safe intermediary protein therapies. ICSPP is gathering momentum and working towards establishing a new project in Ethiopia;
- The GBS WP coordinated a successful application to have pathogen reduced cryoprecipitate (Cryo-PR) listed in the WHO Essential Medicines List (EML)
- The Quality Management WP collaborated with WHO on developing the WHO Guidance on Implementation of a Quality System in Blood Establishments.
Additional highlights from the WPs included in person meetings of all WPs at the Regional Congress in Gothenburg in June 2023, the first such meetings since the onset of COVID-19 Pandemic. Most WPs convened additional virtual meetings through the course of the year to advance their studies and surveys and develop many publications. ISBT webinars were also organized by many WPs in partnership with the CO. I am also pleased to share the decision of the ISBT Board to establish a new “Big Data WP”, with the first formal meeting in Barcelona after a successful workshop at the Gothenburg Congress. Promoting the generation of large-scale datasets, and methodologies and studies using big data including large donor and donor-recipient databases linked to clinical outcomes, disease registries and repositories, was one of my two primary goals as President. My other goal was to formalize the lessons learned from SARS-CoV-2 pandemic vis-à-vis blood safety and contributions of studies of blood donors to infectious disease surveillance and public health. This goal included establishing a “tool kit” to enhance ISBT’s preparedness for responding to future infectious disease threats. This tool kit is now in place and accessible on the ISBT website, thanks to the work of a subgroup of the TTID WP.
“ISBT maintains strong connections with many national and regional professional societies, blood services, educational institutions, academic networks, industry and other organisations.”
This year, we worked with these groups and our CPs and strategic partners on a number of important activities, summarised in this report.
Internally, it has been another year of intense activity at ISBT. The ISBT website has been further developed to support our eLearning program, including our popular live journal clubs and webinars, and permit greater functionality for WP and other member activities, both formal and informal.
We are active on social media, connecting ISBT worldwide via X, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook, so please make use of these resources and communication tools. Transfusion Today was transitioned to to online only with the introduction of Foleon publishing software, with additional features such as links to documents, videos, quizzes etc. to enhance the experience for readers. The ISBT eLearning courses in basic immunohaematology were launched and the Clinical Transfusion WP oversaw translation of the Transfusion Reactions eLearning into Spanish (in addition to English) and started work to translate this module into French. The CO has introduced Kahoot for use by the WPs, which was successfully piloted by the Haemovigilance WP.
A new ISBT App was introduced at Gothenburg and Cape Town for easy access to information and for social connectivity at ISBT congresses.
This report summarises the ideas and efforts of many people. On behalf of ISBT, I thank our Executive Director (Jenny White) and our entire CO team, our members who serve on the ISBT Board helping to refine and implement our strategic plan, our Standing Committees, the ISBT Foundation, the Chairs and members of WPs, and the Editor in Chief (Miquel Lozano), the Editorial Board and staff of Vox Sanguinis. ISBT greatly appreciates the partnerships with our Affiliate organisations, and the scientific input and funding support from our CPs and our congress sponsors and exhibitors, which enable us to maintain our solid financial position and support the activities described in the report.
Please stay engaged in ISBT and plan to attend the 38th International Congress in Barcelona in June, my last as President, which promises to be an incredible scientific and educational event in a great city!
