Inside the giant UK hub getting life-saving blood from donors to recipients
| Published date | 23 February 2022 |
| Publication title | Daily Mirror, The: Web Edition Articles (London, England) |
White blood cells that could cause an unwanted immune response are filtered out, then what’s left is separated into red blood cells, plasma and platelets.
Blood comes to the processing centre in Filton, Glos, by the lorry load daily.
NHS Blood and Transplant’s main manufacturing hub in the Bristol suburb processes over a million units annually.
I watch as this remarkably complex service rapidly sends hospitals and ambulance teams the right type of blood product for their patients. Getting these orders wrong could be fatal.
Cages containing crates of blood are removed from vans and lorries before being wheeled in to the docking area where they are scanned and barcoded.
Andrew Barker, operations manager, tells me: “If we get a local blood donation session come in then some of these bags arrive still warm. That can make some people feel a bit queasy.”
To get rid of the white cells, donated blood is hung in two connecting bags so the contents trickle through a small filter.
The white cells cannot be used so they are removed and incinerated.
The remaining blood is transferred into single bags and given to a lab worker, who spins them in a centrifuge machine.
The denser red cells sink to the bottom, pushing the lighter plasma to the top.
The two elements are then separated by placing each bag into a machine that squeezes the plasma out of the top.
Jade Hunt, technical officer, says: “It’s a really rewarding job. It was always something I wanted to do.
“It’s just so vital that there is enough coming in to our system. We just want to make sure there’s enough to go around.”
Plasma is an amber liquid made up of vital proteins. It makes up 55% of the body’s total blood volume.
It has to be frozen quickly to avoid deterioration. Once solid, it is dispatched to storage at -40C, where it can last for up to three years. Some 176,000 units were processed at Filton last year.
But without plasma proteins, the red blood cells would naturally start to die from this point so preservative is added.
Andrew explains: “This gives the red blood cells some food so they can survive.”
If your blood was among the 1.3 million units processed at Filton last year, it almost certainly made its way into someone else, and probably quickly.
Donations can be in another patient within 48 hours, and as many as three...
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