[Organization of the transfusion supply chain]

Organization of the transfusion supply chain. The transfusion supply chain is a complete and complex organization starting at the marketing step followed by the blood drive preparation. The marketing is getting more and more important since donors move from the country to cities where the blood collection organization must be adapted to the citizen way of life. The collecting step and the pre-donation interview can now be done by trained nurses and nearly 20% are done so at present. Doctors are consulted in case of difficulties or adverse effects. The testing is centralized on only four laboratories in mainland France, highly automatized in order to treat 2 500 donations per day in a very short time. The processing of blood is done during that time and the labelling of blood products is possible at D+1. The products are distributed by the regional processing platforms to the delivery sites located near hospitals (156 delivery sites on the whole territory) and issuing for the patient is done by the immunohematology / delivery services of the EFS in 85% of the transfusion needs or by hospital blood banks in 15%. The security of the transfusion supply chain has clearly improved during the last decade, due to technical progress but also by a better training of the whole staff all along the chain.