Dublin Consensus Statement

There is continuing debate globally in relation to blood transfusion services, plasma collection, the concerns of donors and the rights of patients. It is very widely accepted that blood transfusion services should be based on voluntary unpaid donations and the vast majority of countries are able to manage with such a system. There is a greater dichotomy of views in relation to the collection of plasma. It is not practical or feasible to provide sufficient therapy for people with haemophilia, primary immune deficiency, alpha 1 anti trypsin deficiency and other conditions where the patients rely on plasma manufactured therapies from the plasma recovered from whole blood donations. There is also a requirement to collect plasma separately by plasmapheresis The majority of the plasma collected globally by plasmapheresis is collected from paid donors (about 70%). The majority of patients with haemophilia and primary immune deficiency globally do not have access to sufficient amounts of therapy to treat their condition adequately. There is clearly a need for the collection of more plasma and for the manufacture of more plasma derived therapies. Despite this, there continues to be an ongoing debate about the idea of collecting plasma from paid donors. There has also been a very large emphasis from many of the transfusion services and plasma collection services in relation to the rights of donors as opposed to the rights of patients.

These debates have been going on in the background for many years and many people have taken dogmatic and ideological positions. PLUS, which is a coalition of organisations, including the European Haemophilia Consortium,the World Federation of Hemophilia and the global organisation representing primary immune deficiency patients (IPOPI), have been concerned that for some time that the rights and requirements of patients were not being listened to or factored in to these discussions. To that end, in 2010, PLUS organised a conference in Dublin to bring together the major stakeholders in relation to these issues and this led to the publication of the Dublin Consensus Statement, a set of principles in relation to blood and plasma collection globally.

It sets out key principles in relation to patients, donors, cooperation between all the sectors and global utilisation of donated blood and plasma. Crucially, it states again that the absolute focus of the Blood Establishments and Plasma Industry  must be the patient. This might seem an obvious statement, but we believe that this was not the absolute focus in the past. The principles are designed to ensure that while the rights of donors are respected and donors are never put at risk, the underlying principle should be that patients are entitled to expect that all of the key stakeholders and sectors will support their need for access to safe , effective and sufficient products.