An update of blood donor recruitment and retention in Hong Kong

A healthy blood donor pool has to be well maintained in order to achieve self sufficiency in blood supply. Not only should new and young donors should be attracted and recruited into the pool so as to compensate the loss from drop out and deferred donors. At the same time, previous donors should be also actively retained to ensure they can come regularly. The status of donor recruitment and retention in Hong Kong is reviewed here to highlight the current difficulties in coping with increasing blood demand from an ageing population, stringent donor eligibility criteria and quality requirement in the blood collection. With a systemic analysis of the donation pattern, proposal is put forward to tackle the challenging problems.