In my view

Latin America needs more plasma The Latin American Society for Immune Deficiency (LASID) held its bi-annual meeting in Cancun in October 2019. It was a very impressive meeting that started in its opening session with a short video of patient testimonials. I was not aware that in Mexico, children with primary immune deficiency only receive treatment with immune globulins until they are 5 years…

Donor incentives Recently I was in a meeting with executives from US Blood Banks to talk about ways to incentivize donors. In the plasma industry the incentives are monetary, in Blood Banks it is mostly in the from of gifts like mugs, T-shirts, pins and other gifts. The reason for the meeting was that there is increasing discussion in the blood community whether the blood banks can sustain with…

Edwin J Cohn A brilliant chemist dressed in a three- piece suit who saved the lives of many persons. A person who, in my view, should have been awarded a Nobel Prize. Cohn became famous for his work on the fractionation of plasma during World War II. He developed the techniques for isolating the human serum albumin fraction out of plasma. Albumin is essential for maintaining osmotic pressur…

Stkhldr mtg On October 28, 2019 the European Commission organized a stakeholders meeting to discuss issues related to the potential revision of the European Blood Directive. One of the key messages was that Europe needs to do more when it comes to plasma collection. In that context it is interesting to see what some of the arguments were from representatives from the public sector. The priva…

Memories of Shinji Wada Last week I read the terrible news about many lives being taken after the horrible tornado Hagibis in Japan. That was the moment that I started to think about a very good friend, Shinji Wada who unfortunately passed away almost a year ago. I turned on my tablet and listened to Shinji singing a Beatles song (Twist and Shout) at one of the company gatherings. I had bitter…