Blood of 2,500 donors thrown away

Blood from 2,500 donors had to be thrown away

Blood from more than 2,500 donors has had to be thrown away after a refrigeration unit broke down, costing the National Blood Service £350,000.

The refrigeration unit at the service's centre on the site of Southampton General Hospital broke down last week.

Quality regulations stipulate blood must be stored at between 2C (36F) and 6C (43F), the service said.

The blood "breached our rigorous quality standards and, therefore, has had to be discarded," it added.

No patients were directly affected.

We do value our donors very highly National Blood Service spokeswoman

"Due to a problem with the refrigeration plant, we were unable to issue red blood cells from our Southampton centre last week (Monday-Thursday)," a spokeswoman said.

"The supply of platelets and other products was unaffected and normal service for red blood cells was resumed on Friday 2 May.

"No patients were affected by this event."

Emergency contingency plans to ensure the hospital continued to be supplied with blood had been tried and tested, she said.

"These were put into effect on discovery of the problem, with emergency deliveries continuing to operate from our Southampton centre throughout this period.

"We should emphasise that the regular maintenance checks carried out across all our centres make events such as this a very rare occurrence."

She added: "Finally, we do value our donors very highly."