Blood transfusions are now safer

A new report out today by the National Haemovigilance Office (NHO) shows that having a blood transfusion in Ireland is now a relatively safe procedure.

The report shows while there were more than 168,000 transfusions in 2002 there were problems with 155 of them.

Director of the NHO, Dr Emer Lawlor says most of the problems were as a result of mistakes during the transfusion process.

Eighty-seven of them were associated with some form of human error during the transfusion process and the others relate to actual reactions, which cannot be predicted in advance.

Dr Lawlor says that more sophisticated automated equipment would reduce the risk of such mistakes.