World Blood Donor Day - June 14th 2009

It's World Blood Donor Day, an annual day around the globe to celebrate the amazing gift of life that blood donation and transfusion gives to thousands of people every day, and especially to promote volunteer blood donation (as opposed to paid donors), as this ensures the safest supply of blood.

'If you call them, they will come...'

Spain


Italy


Canada


Testing a donor's blood pre-donation for haemoglobin levels in the olden days



'That wasn't so bad...'









This is what happens to your blood



In the past it used to be stored in glass jars, as these old Red Cross pictures show





The finished product



Pure human solidarity



Today and every day 1,700 people in the UK will receive a blood transfusion

Want to learn more? Click these links:

IWW Valentine's Day Blood Service protest - 14th Feb 2009

On Saturday 14th February the IWW is taking a mobile protest to hospitals around the city, to inform the public and healthworkers about the looming closure of the Birmingham blood processing lab in March. This vital link in the blood supply chain is to be transferred down to Bristol under a centralisation regime, with the loss of around 70 jobs, leaving local hospitals’ blood supply at the mercy of the clogged motorways of the South-West of England.

The IWW, along with other unions and organisations, has campaigned against this dangerous move during the last few years. Unsurprisingly when management proposed these cuts there was the bare minimum of consultation with hospitals and none with the public. Now that the cuts are happening, the least we can do is take the message to the streets and make sure that Birmingham is well informed of exactly what is happening to our public services.

Show some love for the blood service on Valentine’s Day!

• We need cyclists! Lots and lots of cyclists! - To form the body of the convoy behind a large van with banners.
• We also need car drivers who can carry extra protestors. As many as possible.
The protest will meet at Birmingham Uni North gate turning circle, pass the Blood Centre and the QEH/Women’s hospital in Edgbaston, then call at Selly Oak, City, and end up at the Children’s hospital in the city centre.

Meeting points
@ B’ham Uni North Gate (Prichatts Rd) assemble from 11am
@ Selly Oak Hospital (Oak Tree Lane) approx 12 noon – 12.30pm
@ City Hospital (Dudley Road) approx 1.30 pm – 2pm
@ Children’s Hospital (Steelhouse Lane) approx 2.45pm
Finishing in the city centre on foot at 4.30pm

Please put this date into your diaries, and help us build numbers by letting your friends and family, workmates, neighbours and union contacts know about the event. Leaflets and posters are available now. For more info, to confirm attendance, to book a seat as a car passenger, or to get copies of the pre-event leaflet please contact iww.nbs[AT]gmail.com (replace [AT] with @)

New social networking site from the Transplant Trust

The Transplant Trust has launched a new social networking site called thetxspace.com

'thetxspace is for everyone connected with the world of transplantation. Clinicians - Donor families and friends - Patients - Supporters - Carers.

Join the network today!'

NBS SOS benefit party - July 19th

The IWW, a union with members at the National Blood Service, is hosting a fundraising night on 19th July in London, to raise money for the campaign against service cuts.

There will be a fundraising club night organised by JustDefy! for the NBS campaign in Camberwell, south london, on saturday the 19th of July from 11pm. There is a free festival on camberwell green that day too, and we are the afterparty.

Venue is The Redstar, 319 Camberwell Road, Camberwell SE5 0HQ

Price: £5 all night all cash to the campaign

Buses: 36, 436, 171, 185, 12, 35, 45, 40, 42, 68, 468, 148, 176





The night is headlined by legendary underground party DJ Jerome Hill, a techno DJ with the flawless skills of a hip hop spinner, he's played verywhere from Glade to Sao Paulo to Hackney Wick:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=65313308
and his label: http://www.dont-recordings.com/

Dubstep from Louise+1: http://www.myspace.com/louiseplus1

Drum n bass from JNK: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=153482494

Acid techno from Gergl (http://www.serious-business.org.uk/)
and old school hardcore from Metra, who wasn't alive then obviously, but knows what he's doing.

Please come down to support this night if you can, and you can also help by publicising it on your myspace / facebook profile, or your own blog or website, if you have one. Thanks!

WORLD BLOOD DONOR DAY - 14TH JUNE

Today is World Blood Donor Day, an annual event to promote and highlight the amazing and altruistic gift of life which donors give.

Find out more here.

This year's theme is 'Many happy returns', a title chosen to remind us that it is important for donors to give not just once, but regularly, in order to maintain safe stock levels for our hospitals.

Find out about how and where you can donate near you at the National Blood Service website.

Below is the text from a new leaflet promoting both the Save Our Blood Service campaign and the BloodBan campaign.


An Injury to One is an Injury to All

Blood links all of us from donor to patient

It’s generally believed that we live in a selfish, even cruel, world. But humans constantly challenge this view with amazingly generous, social and altruistic behaviour.

Giving blood is pure human solidarity. A patient receiving a transfusion can look up at the pack of red cells feeding into their body and know that someone wanted them to live, without knowing who they are. Blood is a vital fluid that is common to us all.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Less than 5% of the eligible population give blood, and a lot of money is spent on adverts to recruit donors. At present, men who have sex with men are excluded from donating blood. The current opinion of NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is that blood from a sexually active gay man may be more likely to carry infections than blood from a straight person. They claim that screening for disease would be too expensive, although they already screen all blood from heterosexuals, where STDs are on the rise.

Logically if gay men could donate, the donor pool would be instantly increased and less would need to be spent on advertising.

Pressure from the BloodBan campaign and from health workers through their unions has caused NHSBT decision makers to agree to incorporate a review of screening policy as one of the priorities under an equality impact assessment to be rolled out across NHSBT in the coming year.

Find out more at: www.bloodban.co.uk

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NHSBT is making cuts to our blood service nationally. A money-driven restructuring plan is slashing the number of labs which test, filter and process blood. This is wasting the skills of 100s of technicians and scientists who are losing their jobs, and means that hospitals’ blood supply is further away, a huge risk in case of emergencies.

Centralisation like this is often a prelude to privatisation. We all know the decline in care which the private sector brings when it gets its fangs into the NHS. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that a purely voluntary blood service, free from profit, is the safest way to avoid infection. We share a free blood service with less than 25% of the world’s countries – we need to protect it as any one of us could need a transfusion to save our life.

Save Our Blood Service has been fighting cuts in NHSBT. We think that there is a chain of solidarity from the blood donor, to the healthcare workers, right through to the patient receiving the gift of life. We want all of these people to have a greater say in our health service. If you believe the same, we want to hear from you.

To find out more email: nbs.sos@gmail.com or visit: www.nbs-sos.blogspot.com

Demonstration! Watford, Friday 11th April

STOP SLASHING THE BLOOD SERVICE!

Protest at the NBS bosses' HQ

Friday 11th April 2008

The bosses at the National Blood Service want to close labs
and slash 600 jobs in the NBS. Now they are hiding the
findings of a review into whether or not this is safe to do.
Join us at this protest to demand the review findings are
fully revealed, before it's too late to stop these dangerous
cuts.





Assembly point:

Watford Junction Station, 12pm


Demonstration supported by:
• Midlands Network of Health Campaigns
• Bloodban (www.bloodban.co.uk)
• Stop Haringey Health Cuts Coalition
• The Healthworkers Union (IWW-IU 610)
• Hackney Solidarity Network

Birmingham keeps the pressure on

Photos sent in of an awareness-raising street stall held last weekend in Birmingham by staff and their friends and supporters (click for large version).











Keep up the good work out there - many people, including donors and recipients of blood transfusions, are still unaware of the proposed restructuring of our service. If you have any photos like this of street stalls or protests from your area then send them into the campaign email address:

nbs.sos[AT]gmail.com
(replace [AT] with @)

Campaign update

The strategic review of the centralisation proposals is now complete, and NHSBT management will announce their intentions on February 1st.

In recent weeks, city councils have added to the pressure in opposition by coming out against the plans to close local processing and testing labs. In Birmingham a petition signed by over 7000 angry local residents was handed into the leader of the council. Even more local authorities have declared that if the review does not reconsider the cuts, they too will fight the proposals.

When parliament returned after the Christmas break this year, supporters of the campaign joined forces to greet Health Secretary Alan Johnson (ultimately responsible for decisions relating to the NHS) with a huge number of phone calls and emails protesting the cuts. With a high volume of calls on this issue, from not only this country, but as far afield as the US, Canada, and Poland, there could be no mistake that this issue matters to the public.



Meanwhile we have seen more evidence of why only 3 centres is too risky to accept, as a blood van was caught up in an accident on a motorway in the West Country:

Read the story here.

The support campaign is growing massively via the networking site facebook. The links below take you to various ways to keep informed of campaign news, and help to spread the word about the threatened cuts and the fight to stop them.

Save Our Blood Service facebook group (nearly 1000 members - please join and invite your friends)

Save Our NBS facebook profile (add as a friend)

Save Our National Blood Service ‘Cause’ application (please join and help to recruit)

Finally here is some satire which was written by one of the campaign’s supporters - a spoof interview with Fred Fullogarbage, chairman of a new conglomerate formed after a merger between our National Blood Service and the crashed bank Northern Rock…

A glimpse of the future?

Facebook 'Save our Blood Service' group

Anyone with a Facebook account can join a group in opposition to the centralisation of blood testing and processing, and in favour of saving local labs and NBS staff's jobs. It has links to the petition and other ideas for supporters. The group currently has 662 members with more joining every week!

Simply use the Facebook search facility to find 'Save Our Blood Service'.

Please join it and invite all your friends, as this is a useful way to spread the word about the campaign.

Strategy review underway and everything to play for

The NBS centralisation strategy is currently undergoing review by the consultant agency McKinsey & Co. McKinsey are well-known for being the government's favourite choice of consultants in cases of NHS reorganisation (a.k.a. cuts), as this story illustrates, and boast Enron amongst their past clients...

Well-prepared NBS staff reps have been meeting with McKinsey to put forward our comprehensive arguments against the strategy. Here is one document for submission, which details not only the defensive case but suggests better alternative future directions for the NBS (link also added to links section on right of page).

The review alone is no guarantee that the restructuring plans will be stopped, so supporters can still help by contacting the media, who can help to raise awareness, or your city council, who can intervene if they feel they have not been properly consulted about what the closure of local labs will mean for hospitals.

This link will take you to a page where you can find your local Public and Patient Involvement Forum. This is another way for NHS users to formally get involved in debating plans for health service reconfigurations. Please send a copy of the document above to your area's PPI Forum.

Blog updates!

Announcing some new updates and links for this blog.

* Blood Service Chat is a brand new message board - for NHSBT staff, by NHSBT staff.
Get to know each other, have a laugh, share problems and advice, or generally moan and rant (anonymously) about anything. Friends welcome.
BSC was inspired by the massively successful Royal Mail Chat, which has helped posties build unity and communication during the hard times of their dispute with Royal Mail bosses.



* Two new campaign resources are now available to download. Please make copies yourself and help to distribute them both.
This is an up-to-date leaflet aimed at donors, patients, other healthworkers and the general public.
Here is the September edition of the NBS Worker, a new shop-floor staff newsletter. It is hoped the NBS Worker will help to bridge the information gap between centres and sectors, which existing news bulletins from the top are failing to do. Staff please get involved with contributing anything you want to - this newsletter belongs to you.
Links also added to the panel on the right.

* An additional resolution passed by Amicus staff in Manchester has been added to this post about the new proposals for testing in Bristol.
Thanks to a combination of solidarity from colleagues in other centres, and rational and assertive negotiating by staff-side reps, most of the major problems with the orignal drastic proposal have been binned - payments will be kept at the present level, the 6 day week is gone, and hours are improved. Some problems do remain with non-standard hours, but the new set-up has to pass a ballot of the Bristol Amicus membership before it goes live.

Petition races past the 1000 post

Our online e-petition today crossed the 1000 signatures mark and shows no sign of slowing down.

If you haven't signed it yet then please do!
This way to add your voice



Although a petition on its own has limits in terms of causing change, every name represents a person who cares about the future of the Blood Service, and is opposed to the risky and illogical threatened changes. This is great for staff to see. Morale is very low and although support may be huge, it is hard to measure it and more often it feels like no eyes are watching. The NBS is a specialist wing of the NHS which doesn't grab many headlines or column inches. You can help to publicise our cause by sending the link for the petition to all your contacts.

Thanks for your support so far!

Invitation to the NBS Board Meeting 05/07/07

The National Blood Service Board of Directors meets today (Thursday 5th July) at the Bio Products Laboratory (BPL), Dagger Lane, Elstree, Hertfordshire, WD6 3BX.


You're paying for their buffet!

Until recently they preferred more central meeting points but lately this venue in the hard-to-reach backwaters of the commuter belt is their favourite. Less opportunity for embarrassing scenes of angry health workers.

Union reps will be attending from mid-morning to push on with efforts to stop the march of drastic reconfiguration. If you are in the area, you can demonstrate your support for the NBS staff, but even more excitingly, the Board meetings are legally 'public', so you could drop in and ask them to pull you up a chair...

Building this webpage

This is a blog written by rank and file NBS workers, straight from the horse’s mouth. We want to get our side of the story across without being shouted down by management, as often happens in the media, or waiting for remote national union officers to give a watered down version of how we are feeling and what we are doing.



Please help to make this an accurate and in-depth resource, by contributing. This blog is for us and by us!

* Reports are needed from staff from all across the NHS Blood and Transplant sector. Lab workers badly need stronger links with donor carers, transport, office staff and any other colleagues, including blood bank technicians in hospitals. We are divided at the moment but it doesn’t have to stay like this. How are you and your workmates feeling about the strategy? What action is being organised at your centre?

* If you get any articles or letters into the papers, scan the clipping and email it to the address below (jpeg format if possible) and we will get it up online.

* Supporters of the campaign - if you write to management or your MP and get any interesting replies they will be good to add to the blog as well.

* All are welcome to use the comments section as a message board/forum facility, for example for asking questions, suggesting ideas, or sending messages of solidarity and encouragement to staff.

* If you would like to go onto a mailing list to be informed of updates to the blog, contact the blog email address. (We will not pass your email to any spammer scum, neither will we clog up your inbox with unrelated mail you have not requested!)

Submit your content to: nbs.sos[AT]gmail.com
(replace [AT] with @)

How YOU can get involved!

Staff, supporters and union reps have constantly been working to spread the message in all ways possible about the threatened strategy and our opposition. We have written to the media, lobbied MPs both locally and at the Houses of Parliament, spoken at trade union meetings and conferences, and networked extensively with other health campaigners.


Manchester staff working the media


One of many Saturday street stalls in Birmingham city centre


Speaking about the cuts and the campaign against them at Birmingham Trades Council's May Day rally

However there can never be enough of this campaigning activity!
Most people, both medical workers and the general public, are still unaware of the proposals for the NBS, which makes it harder for us to fight them. All of us are potential recipients of freely donated blood. Donors are altruistic people and have a keen interest in the whole transfusion process. They are now being disrespectfully excluded.

You can help our cause directly by adding to the pressure put on the policy makers, and raising awareness of the threatened cuts on our behalf.

* Please tell everyone you know about the threatened centralisation and job cuts in the Blood Service. If you have a website add a link to this page.
* Please write to or phone the local and national media: newspapers, television stations and radio stations.
* Sign our online petition and forward the link onto all your contacts.
* Please write to your MP expressing concern about how your local hospital will be affected by the cuts.
So far MPs have been fobbed off, by NBS management propaganda, from fully joining our campaign against the strategy. However constant letters from constituents about this topic can only make them more likely to call for at least a halt to the restructuring, to allow for real and meaningful consultation.
Use this link to easily contact your MP
* Trade union branches please pass a resolution in support of the NBS workers' campaign, and in opposition to the reconfiguration strategy.
* Future protests will be announced on this blog - please support them in person if you are able to get down to one of the centres near you.
* Leaflets can be downloaded for distribution from the links panel on the right-hand side of this page.
* Finally, if you feel strongly about saving the Blood Service, why not make your feelings known to our boss, Chief Executive Clive Ronaldson?
It may seem pointless but opinions from donors and recipients of blood are valued more than those of staff. Plus it creates extra annoying work if he comes in each morning to a fresh pile of irritated letters and emails on the same subject. Be prepared to wait for a response - and mentally psyche yourself up for the 'everything will be fine' official corporate-speak.

Clive Ronaldson
Managing Director
National Blood Service
Oak House
Read’s Crescent
Watford
Hertfordshire WD24 4PH

clive.ronaldson[AT]nbs.nhs.uk
(replace [AT] with @)

Thanks to all for their support so far.
Post your comments and ideas below...