Report on notifications pursuant to section 21 German Transfusion Act for 2005 and 2006

In 2007, for the first time since the introduction of reporting pursuant to Section 21 of the German Transfusion Act, a timely report including data collected concerning the previous year can be published. In this report on the years 2005 and 2006, a trend analysis over the 7 years since 2000 can be presented. Thereby the favourable result is confirmed that, thanks to sustained reliable reporting on collection, manufacture, import and export of blood and blood products, interesting and meaningful data on the amount of available medicinal products are provided. The amount of heterologous donations increased in 2006 again up to 6.4 million, after a decrease observed since 2003. The share of whole blood donations during the past three years was constantly about 4.7 million, out of which ca. 4.5 million erythrocyte concentrates are manufactured. While in 2005 with 1.8 million Litres plasma for fractionation the lowest amount since 2002 had been collected, the figure increased again in 2006 up to 2.1 million Litres, as a consequence of enhanced apheresis donations. About 40% thereof are exported. On average, 1.75 million Litres are available on the German market; up to 1.4 million Litres are used for basis fractionation in Germany. After introduction of on-line submission as the obligatory way of reporting, the response rate concerning collection of blood and blood components from allergenic donors, and manufacture, import and export as well is 95%. In contrast, in 2006 only 64% of consuming institutions reported; this means 8% less than in 2005. Hence, with regard to the collection of data on the usage of blood products, an unacceptably high rate of missing report from the side of health care facilities persists. Therefore, regrettably even after 7 years, it was not possible to generate a solid basis for the assessment of the demand to be met and thus the supply situation. As a potential approach to a tentative judgement of the supply situation concerning plasma derivatives, a query on the sales figures was performed. A comparison with the reported figures on consumption, however, was of little relevance in many cases. The reported number of haemophilia patients has to be regarded as considerably too low. With the upcoming introduction of a German Haemophilia Register, an improvement of the data base is intended.