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What is Supply Security and why does it matter?
If you need blood or blood products to treat your medical condition, your ability to access the product you need when you need it is absolutely crucial for you. The ability for patients to have access to products when they need them is called ‘supply security’. If the security of supply is adequate, it means there are always products available to meet clinical demand regardless of a range of adverse events.
This means more than just ensuring adequate supply to meet normal variations in supply and demand, but also having emergency plans in place to deal with adverse events should they happen.
Why aren’t supplies always available?
We run out of supplies if demand is greater than supply. Short term problems usually occur because supply levels fall rather than demand suddenly increases.
Supply shortages can occur for many reasons such as suppliers being unable to meet targets, accidental contamination of product, natural disasters or not enough blood being donated by volunteers. For example, blood supplies in the United States have been threatened in the past due to extreme weather conditions which meant that people were unable to donate blood.
Supply shortages most commonly occur when there is a problem in the manufacture of a blood product. If a supplier has a problem, it can potentially affect a large quantity of patients particularly if there are only one or two global suppliers of that product.
For example, recombinant Factor VIIa, used for treating haemophilia patients, is produced only by Novo Nordisk.
Has Australia experienced supply shortages in the past?
The supply of blood and blood products have been threatened in the past in Australia. For example, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) and FVIII have been in limited supply in Australia for many years.
IVIg shortages are often made worse by seasonal variations in plasma donations, production scheduling and manufacturing problems.
Red blood cells are often in short supply in Australia too. Red blood cells can be used for conditions such as anaemia and replacement of blood loss. Shortages can be particular acute in winter, as more donors are not able to donate because they have the flu or have other illnesses.
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This page last modified on January 27, 2009
