10 Chapter 1 War II. More wartime innovations occurred, including complex logistical enterprises to send blood products across lands and seas, symbolizing the power of human industrialization to master and use what, only a few decades before, was considered a strange substance.1 After the war, blood-related innovations continued. In the 1950s, plastic bags and associated tubing were created (replacing decades of glass bottles), which became “the heart of a flexible blood processing system that made all subsequent advances in blood processing possible” (Starr, p. 181).1 Many more subsequent advances would occur. In the 1970s, Transfusion Medicine became a sub-specialty within medicine, paving the way to transfusion experts and the world of blood banking and transfusion services.3 However, the 1980s-1990s saw tragedies strike BEs in the form of transfusion-transmitted infections of HIV and hepatitis, and the implementation of various screening tests for donor blood. These events created a global societal and legal uproar that shook and shattered the public’s reputation in BEs. Hence, as the opening quote states, as blood metamorphosed symbolically and physically over time, so did the management of it and the organizations that were built around it.1 1.2 A Brief History of Sanquin In the Netherlands, blood banking services existed as separated entities until 1998 when a merge occurred between the then-22 locations and the Central Laboratory of the Netherlands Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service (CLB). This merge resulted in two main locations (Amsterdam and Nijmegen) under a new organization called “Sanquin,” from the Latin word sanguis, meaning blood. Its original logo of the Dalmatian pelican with a red drop over its breast refers to the legend of the pelican shedding her own blood to feed her young, and emphasizes the sacrificial action of blood donation to save lives.4 With this merge, the government passed the Blood Supply Act so that Sanquin would be the sole BE in the country. Currently, Sanquin has 136 donation centers, both fixed and mobile, five distribution centers, and one testing facility housed at the headquarters in Amsterdam. Sanquin employs approximately 2,000 employees. In 2023, there were 429,716 registered donors who donated 756,752 units of blood of which 51% were whole blood donations and 49% were apheresis donations (see Table 1.1).5
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