HEALTH authorities in Spain are crying out for blood donors and has run up a deficit of 300,000 litres per year.
This has to be imported from the USA, since blood donor numbers have fallen by 9.24% in the past year.
According to the Spanish Blood Donor Federation (FEDSANG), the shortfall imported makes up 50% of the amount of blood used in Spanish hospitals annually.
To make up the balance, the number of donors needed in Spain would have to go up to four per 1,000 inhabitants, from its current 3.6 – but numbers have been declining constantly, dropping 7% between 2010 and the end of 2014.
Blood transfusions are carried out daily in Spanish hospitals – around 6,200 patients are given them, of whom nearly a quarter (24%) are fighting cancer and a similar number (23%) receive them during or after surgery.
Not all of Spain's 17 autonomously-governed regions have the same needs for donor blood, meaning smaller or less-populated ones manage to cover their hospitals' needs and have a higher number of donors than the average of four per 1,000 needed.
These include Extremadura, Castilla y León, the Basque Country, Galicia and Cantabria.
But in the Canary Islands, Murcia, Andalucía, Catalunya, Castilla-La Mancha, Aragón and La Rioja, donor numbers are below the national average, with fewer than 3.5 per 1,000 residents.
Regions that fall somewhere between 3.5 and the necessary four per 1,000 are Valencia, Madrid, the Balearic Islands, Navarra and Asturias.
Spain has around two million donors in total, but needs closer to four million.
But many population groups who are healthy, not on any medication, of the required weight – over 50 kilos, or 7st 12lb – and who have no reason not to give blood are excluded from doing so due to rules which those affected consider 'ridiculous'.
Homosexual men are banned from giving blood if they have been in a relationship in the past 10 years due to a perceived HIV risk – although in practice, figures show that in the western world, new HIV patients are more likely to be young, heterosexual women.
And British citizens living in Spain are not allowed to give blood – even though thousands of them did so regularly all their lives in the UK.
Anyone who lived in the UK at any time between 1980 and 1996 is automatically barred because of the 'risk' of transmitting 'mad cow disease' – a bone of contention with many expats who are keen to carry on their twice-annual blood donating that they were used to doing in their home country.
But FEDSANG has launched an appeal to the European Parliament against both these decisions, given that every dose of blood which has to be bought costs US$200 .
The USA has a high number of willing blood donors, because they are paid to do so – in 80 out of the 200 countries in the world where blood is given, however, donations are voluntary.
Read more at tthinkSPAIN.com