Chairperson and committee
Chairperson: Thierry Peyrard (France)
Vice Chair: Nicole Thornton (UK)
Secretary: Sofia Lejon Crottet (Switzerland)
Treasurer: Mostafa Moghaddam (Iran)
Chair Emeritus: Sandra Nance (USA)
Membership
The full Working Party (WP) membership is currently 46 ISBT members, with 26 countries
The liaison persons with other Working Parties are as follows:
- Vered Yahalom (Israel), Chair of the WP on Rare Donors
- Catherine Hyland (Australia) and Christoph Gassner (Switzerland), Co-Chairs of the WP on Red Cell Immunogenetics and Blood Group Terminology
The ISBT Board liaison person is Katerina Pavenski, ISBT Regional Board Director for North America.
The establishment of five focus subgroups of the WP, was officially endorsed during the WP Business Meeting which took place in Gothenburg. Members selected their first and second choice from the following subgroups:
- Serology Testing
- Molecular Testing
- Staff Education & Training
- Immunohaematology (IH) Reagents
- Quality Assurance & Accreditation in IH Laboratory
Seven new candidates have expressed interest in joining our WP. Elections are planned to be organised by the Barcelona ISBT Congress in June 2024.
Meetings and Teleconferences
Two meetings of the Executive Committee took place (April 28, 2023 and May 11, 2023) to organise the full business meeting of the WP, held at the Gothenburg ISBT Congress on June 17, 2023.
Five new members were officially elected at this business meeting. 18 members were present and 15 attended by videoconference. Eight guests attended the meeting.
Activities during the period
A videoconference between the Chair and Vice Chair of the WP was organised on October 25, 2023 to make a WP session proposal for the main scientific program of the ISBT Congress 2024 (Barcelona, Spain). Two 75-minute session proposals were submitted. One was accepted by the ISBT scientific committee as a Workshop, entitled “Complex cases in the immunohaematology reference laboratory”.
A budget request for educational purposes was proposed in January 2024 (immunohaematology training travel grant in an established laboratory), which was accepted by the ISBT Board.
