Demographic behaviour of whole blood donors in a regional blood service - Implications for donor recruitment policies

Background

Demographic changes in the general population have been shown to result in changes in the blood donor population and are a major challenge to ensure a sufficient and reliable blood supply both, currently and in the coming years. Moreover, different (social) media are increasingly used to enhance donor recruitment an maintenance. We aimed to characterize the dynamics within our whole blood donor reservoir, in order to elaborate potential checkpoints to optimize mobilization to donation.

Methods

Donor and Donation Data were obtained using Structured Query Language Data Extraction from our database (PC-Blut, MSSE, Schwäbisch Hall, Germany). Donors were personally invited using printed invitation cards, through our own telephone call center, or contacted via E-Mail. Invitation algorithm and invitation frequencies were not grossly altered over the observation periods. In 2020, a telephone call center was installed for incoming and outgoing donation requests and dates.

Results

The mean frequency of whole blood donations per donor decreased from 2.6 to 1.9/year between 2010 and 2022. In parallel, the percentage of first time donors remained relatively constant in the observation period (7.4% to 8.4 %), with only a modest outlier in 2020 (9.2%). First time donors in the 18-30y age group decreased from 64% (2010) to 58% (2022), whereas they increased from 14% to 21% in the 30-39y age group, whereas the other age groups remained relatively constant. Over all age groups, the number of donors who donated once a year increased by 41% and those who donated twice by 15%, whereas, donors donating 3 and more times per year dropped from 26 to 11%.

Conclusion

Our data show a higher donor reservoir, but more difficulty to mobilize donors to donation. First time donor mobilization seems to get less effective in the 18-29 year olds but more effective in the 30-39 year age group. The SARS-CoV2 pandemic situation did not recognizably result in changes in these long-time trends. These data are valuable to optimize targeting age groups for new donor recruitment, and form a basis to better assess the available donor reservoir, e.g in case of blood shortages.

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