The country’s top doctor has joined calls from NHS Blood and Transplant for blood group O Positive and O Negative donors to book appointments to donate urgently at one of the 25 donor centres in England to boost stocks of O-type blood following last week’s ransomware cyber attack against some of London’s hospitals.

Donor emergency: the NHS’s blood stocks need topping up, urgently

NHS England has deployed a cyber incident response team, which is working round the clock to support tech suppliers Synnovis and provide emergency guidance, as well as coordinating with health services across the capital to minimise disruption to patient care.

The NHS is advising all patients to continue coming forward as normal following the cyber-attack.

Urgent and emergency care continues to be available, so patients should access NHS services in the normal way by dialling 999. For any other health concern, the public should use NHS 111, through the NHS app, online or on the phone. Patients should continue to attend appointments unless they are told otherwise.

This week just happens to be National Blood Week.

The NHS says that three blood donations are needed in hospitals every minute to deal with emergencies, childbirth and routine treatments.

There are around 13,000 appointments available nationally this week in NHS Blood Donor Centres, 3,400 of them in London. The closest donor centre to Croydon is at Tooting.

The IT incident affecting a pathology provider means the affected hospitals cannot currently match patients’ blood at the same frequency as usual.

For surgeries and procedures requiring blood to take place, hospitals need to use O-type blood as this is safe to use for all patients. Blood has a shelf life of 35 days, so stocks need to be continually replenished.

That means more units of these types of blood than usual will be required over the coming weeks to support the wider efforts of frontline staff to keep services running safely for local patients.

O-negative is the type that can be given to anyone – known as the universal blood type.

It is used in emergencies or when a patient’s blood type is unknown. Air ambulances and emergency response vehicles carry O-negative supplies. Just 8% of the population have type O Negative but it makes up for around 15% of hospital orders.

Call for help: NHS’s Prof Stephen Powis

O-positive is the most common blood type – 35% of donors have it – and it can be given to anybody with any positive blood type. This means 3-in-4 people can benefit from an O-positive donation.

Prof Stephen Powis, the medical director for NHS England, said: “NHS staff are continuing to go above and beyond to minimise the significant disruption to patients following the ransomware cyber-attack on Synnovis last week.

“Unfortunately, we know that a number of operations and appointments have been postponed or diverted to other neighbouring hospitals not impacted by the cyber-attack, as we prioritise pathology services for the most clinically urgent cases.

“To help London staff support and treat more patients, they need access to O-negative and O-positive blood, so if one of these is your blood type, please come forward to one of the 13,000 appointments currently available in NHS Blood Donor Centres.”

Following the bank holidays and school half-term, the NHS currently has lower-than-normal stocks of type O blood.

This National Blood Week also marks the start of a big summer push by NHSBT for new donors to come forward and register.

• For more information search GiveBlood online and on socials or visit Blood.co.uk.

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