Hospital Newsletter

National awards honour six extraordinary contributors to Canada’s Lifeline

This year’s honourees include two recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as recipients of the Living Organ Donor Award, the National Partnership Award, the Logan Boulet Award and the Schilly Award.

“Our national awards celebrate the exceptional dedication, generosity, and impact of individuals and partners who strengthen Canada’s Lifeline,” says Dr. Graham Sher, CEO of Canadian Blood Services.

“Their contributions inspire others to join the critical work of saving lives across the country.”

Honourees and their achievements

• The Schilly Award: Presented to Maralee Caruso for her outstanding contributions to recruiting blood and plasma donors and stem cell registrants through her annual Hero in You campaign, created in memory of her mother.
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Dr. Dean Fergusson was honoured for his extraordinary contributions to clinical research, including optimizing the use of blood in transfusion medicine and studying the impact of donor age and gender on transfusion outcomes.
• Living Organ Donor Award: Moira Korus was recognized for donating her kidney anonymously following a 35-year nursing career, with 27 years spent in nephrology and transplant coordination. Her act of generosity has inspired awareness and support for living organ donation in Canada.
• National Partnership Award: The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario was acknowledged for hosting an inspiring mural on their building and increasing employee engagement in Canadian Blood Services’ Partners for Life program.
• Logan Boulet Award: Presented to the NoahStrong foundation for their exceptional efforts to raise awareness about organ and tissue donation. The foundation honours the legacy of their son Noah by encouraging others to register as donors and giving patients a second chance at life.
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Dr. Theodore E. Warkentin was recognized as a leading expert in transfusion medicine, specializing in blood clotting disorders and rare conditions. Now retired, Dr. Warkentin continues to contribute through research, teaching and patient care.

For more information about our national awards program please visit: blood.ca/nationalawards.

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10 amazing ways donated blood and plasma help save lives

When you think about why hospitals need blood, the first image that comes to mind may be a car crash. But donated blood (including blood components such as plasma and platelets) are not only used to replace blood lost through injury.

Here are some of the many incredible ways donations support patients:

1. Blood supports people with cancer
2. Plasma is used to make lifesaving medications
3. More than 15,000 blood donations each year are helping people in Canada with sickle cell disease
4. Blood helps babies in the womb
5. Blood helps babies shortly after birth
6. Blood helps children with severe food poisoning
7. Blood enables people to survive sepsis
8. Blood supports those going through organ failure and organ transplants
9. Blood supports research
10. Blood to the rescue in cases of trauma and severe bleeding

Find out exactly how blood and plasma is used to help patients in these 10 ways here.

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Celebrating the impact of the vCJD eligibility change

December 4, 2024 marked the first anniversary since the eligibility change related to time spent in the United Kingdom, France and Ireland during the ‘mad cow’ disease outbreak. In just one year, the positive impact is impressive: approximately 8,667 new donors and 5,159 previously deferred donors showed up to donate due to this change—and they returned again and again for an estimated total of 23,535 blood and plasma donations!

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You’re invited to take our new Virtual Tour!

Canadian Blood Services’ new Virtual Tour provides an easy to access, highly visual introduction to the journey of a blood donation from donor to recipient and is now available on Canadian Blood Services professional education website, Profedu.ca.

Originally envisioned as a centralized and interactive tool to help introduce new medical and laboratory trainees to information about Canada’s blood system, the Virtual Tour promotes awareness of the step-by-step processes for recruiting donors and collecting, manufacturing, testing, labelling, storing and distributing blood components to hospitals for transfusion.

The Tour includes 9 sections, referred to as ‘stops', that highlight each of the steps in the vein-to-vein journey of a whole blood donation.

While it is recommended to take the Tour in sequential order to understand the journey from start to finish, a unique element in the design of this Tour is the ability of the visitor to navigate at their own pace. This allows learners to focus on the main stops for key takeaways or choose to take a deep dive into the curated selection of additional resources, links and videos thoughtfully integrated into each stop.

You can read more about the Virtual Tour and how it was created here.

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Our new resources for health-care professionals

To support best practices in transfusion medicine, Canadian Blood Services develops educational resources in collaboration with subject-matter experts from across Canada.

Visit our professional education website, a trusted resource hub for health-care professionals across the country, and check out these new resources:

• Chapter 1, Vein to vein: A summary of the blood system in Canada. This chapter revision in the Clinical Guide to Transfusion details the history of the blood system in Canada and the creation of Canadian Blood Services. Learn more about the interrelationships in the Canadian blood system as well as the roles of the government, hospitals, and other organizations.
• Summary of adverse transfusion reactions 2019–2024. The adverse transfusion reactions data reported to Canadian Blood Services have been updated for the fiscal year 2023–2024.
• Breakthroughs in blood: Advancements into action. Breakthroughs in blood is a webinar series for sharing groundbreaking findings in blood research and promoting best practices in transfusion. On our professional education website, you’ll find webinar recordings and resources to support practice change. The resources are for health-care professionals, hospital administrators, policy makers and researchers.
  • The International Collaboration for Transfusion Medicine Guidelines’ (ICTMG) Use of Intravenous Albumin guideline: Moving evidence into practice (date of webinar: September 6, 2024). Visit the Breakthroughs in blood page to access the webinar recording and other resources.
  • HEMOTION (date of webinar: October 25, 2024). Visit the Breakthroughs in blood page to access the webinar recording and other resources.

You can also find the latest updates from the National Advisory Committee on Blood and Blood Products (NAC) on our transfusion medicine home page.

If you don’t already receive our Research & Education Round Up, you can subscribe to the monthly newsletter here for updates on the latest news, publications, and events from Canadian Blood Services’ research and education network.

Innovation and Portfolio Management Annual Impact Report

The Innovation and Portfolio Management Annual Impact Report 2023-2024 is now available. Using case studies and spotlights on works-in-progress, this report highlights how Canadian Blood Services' innovation and portfolio management team supports research and education initiatives for Canada's Lifeline, including how we help build leaders and support research to strengthen the blood system, and mobilize knowledge to maximize impact.

Described in this report are the important contributions of Canadian Blood Services scientists and trainees; our adjunct scientists in academic institutions; researchers funded through our competitive funding programs; and our partners in academia, non-profit organizations, hospitals, industry and government. Access the full report on blood.ca, read our R.E.D. blog post about the report, and download the four research impact case studies.

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This donor’s rare blood travelled 6,000 kilometres to save a life

Jason Daum is a giver. It’s just who he is, he says. It’s how he understands the world.

“I just think it's an important part of how we actually make others around us better, and how we make ourselves better,” says Jason, the owner-operator of a renovation company in Regina, Sask. “I actually believe that it's truly part of who I am.”

Jason first donated blood about 18 years ago when he was 17. He gave regularly before falling out of the habit. When he came back about 10 months ago — after his daughter donated and gave him a little nudge — the procedure was a bit different. He was given the opportunity to specify his ethnicity in a questionnaire.

Jason selected “Black”. His choice to answer that question directly led to the discovery of his rare blood type, putting him on the path to a momentous donation a few months later.

To understand why, you need to know a little bit about blood types. Every red blood cell in your body is coated with molecules called “antigens.” While a handful of these determine the major blood groups (A, B, AB, and O, all of which can be positive or negative for the Rh factor), there are hundreds of other antigens as well. If you have unusual ones, or are missing antigens that most people have, your blood type could be “rare” — occurring in fewer than 1 in 500 people — even if you have a very common ABO and Rh combination, such as O-positive.

Additionally, because antigens are inherited, profiles that are common in one ethnic group may be less common in another. And while anyone can have a rare blood type, some rare types are found only in people of particular ancestral backgrounds.

This is why, in 2022, Canadian Blood Services began asking donors for more detail about their ethnicity. If you answer the ethnicity question, we may then do a DNA analysis of your donated blood, to understand your antigens at a genetic level (while respecting your privacy by not analyzing other genetic information). This process, called “genotyping,” is already yielding incredible results. For example, by genotyping donors who identify as Filipino, we’ve tripled our discovery of donors in Canada with a rare blood type called “JK3”.

Finding rare blood donors is critical, because while donor genotyping is not essential for most patients who need transfusions, some with unusual antigens or antigen combinations develop antibodies. These patients may suffer a dangerous immune reaction if given blood that is not matched to them accordingly. They greatly benefit from efforts to increase genotyping as well as to build a more diverse donor base.

Find out about the incredible donation that only Jason could make here.

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