Young donor health and safety: are we doing enough?

Abstract

In some countries, blood collection is permitted from donors as young as 16 years of age. Young donors represent a unique challenge for blood collection organizations as they must balance their need for these donors against protecting the health and safety of this potentially vulnerable donor population. As young donors have become increasingly important to ensuring the adequacy of the blood supply, donor haemovigilance programmes found that they were disproportionally affected by adverse blood donation reactions. These findings served as the impetus for many blood collection organizations to implement interventions to reduce donor reaction rates in the younger age groups. While blood collectors have made great strides in reducing the rates of immediate adverse reactions of blood donation, less attention has been paid to possible long‐term consequences of iron deficiency. With increased reliance on young donors to provide a significant part of the blood supply, it is of the utmost importance that these donors have a good experience when they donate blood and do not suffer any adverse health and safety effects from their altruistic act. Adverse donor reactions and iron deficiency still pose threats to the health and safety of young donors. Continued research is needed in both of these areas to adequately protect young donors.