From the President

As we embark on 2025, a year that challenges us to adapt to pressures from all sides — climate issues, conflicts, crises of trust, lack of mutual understanding — our discipline, which connects donors, ourselves, and recipients, holds a crucial role to play. Transfusion medicine is unique in being the only medical field that directly links healthy individuals with altruistic motivations to patients who benefit directly from such solidarity, embodying the very essence of human compassion and collaboration.

How can we ISBT better serve the interests of all, in the diversity and global scope of our missions? ISBT is not merely a scientific society in one given region that fosters collaborations with other regions. ISBT embodies the totality of the regions across the world and their diversity. Therefore, our reflections should focus on improving our ability to account for the universality of needs, the diverse medical, economic and cultural contexts, and the shared demand to advance care.

At the heart of these efforts is the new ISBT Strategic Plan for 2025-2029, which will drive all our activities over the next five years. This forward-looking plan should further refine our collective commitment to addressing global challenges, fostering innovation and knowledge implementation, to enhance the impact of transfusion medicine worldwide.

ISBT Regional Directors, members of the ISBT, can play an essential role in this effort. They act as a liaison between ISBT and regional stakeholders, ensuring that their region’s unique needs and challenges are considered. Doing so, Regional Directors may advocate for policies and initiatives that collaboratively address specific blood transfusion issues in their regions, encourage local participation in ISBT educational programs and conferences and contribute to regional events to strengthen local engagement and capacity. I want to express my gratitude for their commitment.