Blood supply management during the Covid-19 pandemic: Experience in a tertiary referral hospital in Malaysia

Multivariate time-series blood donation/demand forecasting for resilient supply chain management during COVID-19 pandemic

“…Blood platelets have a very short shelf-life of 5 days ( Fung et al, 2017 ). It causes serious challenges for the hospitals to maintain the required inventory of the blood platelets which minimizes both wastage and shortage ( Tan et al, 2021b ). As mentioned above, by spreading the COVID-19 pandemic, blood centers faced a decrease in the number of donors, and blood drives continued to be cancelled.…”

“… Ref. Country/Region Hospital Number of blood donation Number of blood unit demand 2019 2020 Change % 2019 2020 Change % Balagholi et al (2021) Iran Tehran Center 78,326 62,026 −20.8 N/A N/A N/A Loua et al (2021) WHO African Region N/A 1,800,236 1,498,773 −16.7 1,683,345 1,471,088 −12.6 Tan et al (2021b) India Raja Permaisuri 14,486 11,895 −17.9 9,936 7,888 −20.6 Yahia (2020) Saudi Arabia King Abdullah 293 175 −39.5 313 245 −21.7 …”

Hospital red blood cell and platelet supply and utilization from March to December of the first year of the COVID‐19 pandemic: The BEST collaborative study

“…3,6 Investigators around the world, in Canada, Italy, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, reported decreases in blood donations and blood products produced. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] In the United States (US), in March 2020, the American Red Cross alone canceled more than 4600 blood drives, reducing the available blood supply by 143,600 units. 16 At the same time, in the spring of 2020, elective surgical procedures in many countries were canceled.…”

“…4,18 Many hospitals also transitioned to mainly caring for COVID-19 patients who were found to require few transfusions, even when critically ill. 3,[18][19][20][21] Published studies to date have reported on blood supply and utilization during the first few weeks to months of the pandemic in one region of the world. 3,6,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Although it has been suggested that the initial reduced blood supply during the pandemic was counterbalanced by decreased clinical activity and thus blood use, few studies have tested this hypothesis. 4,[12][13][14][15]20 We conducted a retrospective study of 13 institutions in 4 countries aimed at characterizing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospital blood supply and utilization from March through December of the pandemic in 2020.…”

Implementation of maximum surgical blood ordering schedule in a tertiary hospital in Malaysia during COVID-19 pandemic

“…Blood collection in Malaysia mainly rely on voluntary, non-remunerated blood donors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, blood collection had dropped about 40% in the Malaysia National Blood Centre [ 2 ] and 18% in Hospital Raja Permaisuri Bainun (HRPB), a tertiary referral hospital in Perak state of Malaysia [ 3 ]. Blood collection and blood usage in HRPB was 25,000 bags respectively in year 2020.…”