Chairperson and committee
Chairperson: Vered Yahalom (Israel)
Vice Chair: Thierry Peyrard (France)
Secretary: Inna Sareneva (Finland)
Treasurer: Tanya Powley (Australia)
IBGRL liaison: Nicole Thornton (UK)
Past Chair: Christine Lomas-Francis (USA)
Membership
There are 37 members in the Rare Donors Working Party (WP) representing 27 countries.
Three new members joined the WP: Matthew Yan (Canada), Moira Keough representing (Ireland), a new country in the WP, and Marina Izak (Israel).
Rekha Anand (UK), Britt VanAelst (Belgium), and Gwen Clarke (Canada) resigned from the WP. Gwen Clarke remains as the WP ISBT board liaison. We thank Rekha, Gwen, and Britt for their service and contributions to the WPRD and to patients requiring rare blood.
All members are actively involved in their respective country’s rare donor programs or transfusion support of patients with rare blood. As outlined in the Terms of Reference for the Rare Donors WP, members are required to share the rare donor list from their country with the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory (IBGRL) which manages the International Rare Donor Panel (IRDP).
Meetings and Teleconferences
- The executive committee met twice; once on June 16, 2023 before the ISBT regional meeting in Gothenburg and virtually on January 30, 2024. Two virtual meetings were held with ISBT scientific officer to promote the Rare Donor webpage update. An additional meeting was held with the ISBT financial manager to enable reagent shipments to support a developing rare donor program via a FedEx account.
- An official hybrid business meeting of the WP RD took place on June 17, 2023 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Meeting topics discussed included but were not limited to the following: mentoring programs and new rare donor programs support, educational materials, contributions to ISBT, reagents shipments for new rare donor programs, working party webpage update, a scientific project concerning the generation of enzymatically converted RBCs with the Bombay phenotype (ECOh) presented by Roland Fiskesund (Karolinska Institute, Sweden), a report of the International Rare Donor Panel (IRDP) activities presented by Nicole Thornton (UK) and a report on the American Rare Donor Program celebrating their 25th anniversary presented by Margaret Keller (USA).
- E-mail communications among members were sent throughout the year. They provided an easy and effective way to seek information, assist in the search for rare blood, ship rare anti-sera to the recently established Rare Donor Latin American Group (GCIAMT), collaborate on scientific projects, and to gather information in preparation for the ISBT congress and for the update of the ISBT WPRD webpage. The executive committee communicated frequently by e-mail including on the above-mentioned items.
Activities during the period
ISBT Education
- WPRD contributions to the 33rd Regional ISBT Congress in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2023 included:
- A WP session in the main scientific program: "Challenging cases - transfusion support in pregnancy" Oral Abstracts:
- “Finding Rare - well done!”
- “Survey blood components & blood donor testing standards”
- Two additional case studies were uploaded to the ISBT WPRD webpage entitled:
- Anti-Lub and the Benefits of International Collaboration by Ruwayda Soeker (South Africa)
- The Child with Sickle cell anemia and anti-Yta by Christoph Weinstock (Germany).
Throughout the year Eduardo Muñiz Diaz (Spain) mentored the Rare Donor Latin American Group (GCIAMT) to further develop their rare donor programs individually and as a collaborative group. Shipments of antisera from WP members to the GCIAMT were achieved following extensive preparations and logistic arrangements. Following discussions with ISBT office and Finances, from February 2024, reagent shipments are made through an ISBT FedEx account, making logistics easier for both the shipper and the recipient.
A survey was sent to WPRD members concerning transfusion policies to support IgA-deficient patients, availability of IgA-deficient products, and methods to screen for IgA deficiency. The collected information was accepted as an abstract to the 38th International ISBT Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and will be available as an additional resource on the updated ISBT WPRD webpage.
The European Blood Alliance (EBA) in collaboration with the ISBT Working Party on Rare Donors held a workshop on Rare Blood Provision in April 2023. The workshop was hosted by the NHSBT in Bristol and led by Nicole Thornton and colleagues.
