01 August 2010
The National Blood Authority (NBA) has released its second Australian Haemovigilance Report.
The 2010 Report conveys details on the nature and extent of transfusion errors and reactions that occurred in Australian hospitals from July 2008 to June 2009.
The report includes validated data from jurisdictional haemovigilance programs; BloodSafe in South Australia, the Queensland Incidents in Transfusion program and the Victorian Blood Matters – Better Safer Transfusion Program and Serious Transfusion Incident Reporting (STIR) program. STIR also supports haemovigilance in Tasmania, the ACT and Northern Territory.
The report notes that transfusion risks generally fall into two main categories:
Procedural errors such as patient misidentification and blood sampling errors, and transfusing the wrong patient, and
Soft copies of the report can be downloaded from the NBA website, or you can request hard copies.
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