Blood: Donors

(asked on 15th July 2025) - View Source
Questioner
Bell Ribeiro-Addy Portrait
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
(Labour - Clapham and Brixton Hill)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 2 July 2025 to Question 63048 on Blood: Donors, if she will provide the ethnic breakdown of the 173,574 donors deferred due to Haemoglobin as a proportion of (a) total deferrals and (b) total deferrals per ethnic group.

Answered by
Ashley Dalton Portrait
Ashley Dalton
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 21st July 2025

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is responsible for collecting blood donations across England, in order to fulfil hospital requests to meet patient need. From 1 June 2024 to 31 May 2025, a total of 173,574 donors were deferred due to low haemoglobin. The following table shows the ethnic breakdown of these deferrals as a proportion of total deferrals, and the total deferrals per ethnic group:

Ethnicity

Total deferrals

Low haemoglobin deferrals

Percentage of total deferrals

Percentage of total deferrals per ethnicity

Any other Asian background

3,448

1,737

0.6%

50.4%

Any other Black/African/Caribbean background

724

460

0.2%

63.5%

Any other ethnic group

1,409

668

0.2%

47.4%

Any other mixed/multiple ethnic background

2,114

1,191

0.4%

56.3%

Any other White background

17,343

9,558

3.3%

55.1%

Arab

1,005

429

0.1%

42.7%

Asian Bangladeshi

817

444

0.2%

54.3%

Asian Indian

7,176

4,367

1.5%

60.9%

Asian Pakistani

2,126

1,073

0.4%

50.5%

Black- African

6,562

4,195

1.4%

63.9%

Black- Caribbean

3,663

2,472

0.8%

67.5%

Chinese

1,709

921

0.3%

53.9%

English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British

231,879

139,701

48.0%

60.2%

Mixed White and Asian

2,071

1,080

0.4%

52.1%

Mixed White and Black African

842

500

0.2%

59.4%

Mixed White and Black Caribbean

2,093

1,319

0.5%

63.0%

Not disclosed

1,516

869

0.3%

57.3%

Unknown

880

430

0.1%

48.9%

White Irish

3,634

2,160

0.7%

59.4%

Total

291,011

173,574

59.6%

59.6%

Source: data is taken from NHSBT’s centrally held administrative systems, extracted 27 June 2025

Note: ‘Any other ethnic group’ includes Gypsy or Irish Traveller and Roma to comply with small number suppression.

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