NHSBT is part of the UK National Health Service. It employs 5,100 people across the UK, and its main roles are co-ordination of organ donation throughout the UK, and responsibility for collection, processing, testing and issue of blood products within England. NHSBT facilitates the transplantation of 4,500 organs and the collection of 1.7 million blood donations per annum. In addition to these main responsibilities, it also has a role in bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell banking, cord blood banking, and tissue banking. Our Tissue and Eye services section provides the majority of tissue allografts used for therapeutic purposes within the UK.
Relevant experience and activities
o Screening and selection of 2,000 living tissue donors, 500 deceased multi-tissue donors and 3,000 eye donors per annum.
o Processing, banking and issue of multiple types of tissue including musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, skin, and ocular allografts.
o An active research and development program to develop new types of allograft and more effective processing methods for existing types of tissue allograft
o Responsibility for 50% of the bone marrow/peripheral blood stem cell donations banked in the UK
o We run the largest cord blood bank in the UK, which stores around 20,000 units, and is the only one which operates in the public sector.
