A WHO tool for risk-based decision making on blood safety interventions

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Health Policy
• Risk Management

Background:

• Risk-based decision making is crucial for national blood policy and safety interventions, particularly for emerging infectious threats.
• Low- and middle-income countries require practical, accessible decision support tools for blood safety.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) developed a tool to aid blood safety decision-making.

Purpose of the Study:

• To summarize the content, functionalities, and value of the new WHO blood safety decision support tool.
• To demonstrate the tool's application using a fictitious case study on reducing HIV transmission risk.
• To evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative and qualitative assessment approaches within the tool.

Main Methods:

• Development of a WHO decision support tool for blood safety.
• Inclusion of both quantitative Multi-Criteria Decision Assessment and qualitative step-by-step assessment functionalities.
• Application of the tool to a hypothetical blood safety intervention scenario (HIV transmission reduction).

Main Results:

• The quantitative approach provides decision robustness but can lack nuance and interpretability with multiple constraints.
• The qualitative approach structures thought processes and argumentation systematically but doesn't assess robustness.
• Both quantitative and qualitative methods have complementary strengths and weaknesses.

Conclusions:

• The quantitative and qualitative approaches to risk-based decision making are mutually enhancing.
• A combined approach using both quantitative and qualitative methods is recommended for selecting blood safety interventions.
• This integrated strategy supports informed decision-making for blood safety in diverse settings.