The Blood Establishment, which is a part of the Diagnostic Clinic of North Estonia Medical Centre, is situated in 2 locations: Ädala Street and Foorum Centre at city centre. The Blood Establishment is active also outside these buildings – employees of Blood Establishment visit every day places which are suitable for collecting blood: schools, companies, cultural and sports centres, donor tents in summer etc. Blood establishment was merged with North Estonia Medical Centre on June 1st, 2006. The purpose of the Blood Establishment is to guarantee high-quality services of transfusion medicine and high-quality proprietary medicinal products made of donor blood. Blood establishment employs 8 doctors, 7 laboratory specialists, 28 nurses, 13 laboratory assistants, 11 receptionists, 6 production operators and 11 other employees.
Donor blood is used to prepare more than 50,000 different preparations and 28 000 units of blood plasma fractions for hospitals. These are used to produce coagulation factors, immunoglobulin and albumin for patients. The Blood Establishment has been implementing versatile quality system, modern testing methods and good manufacturing practices (European GMP) in order to ensure the efficiency and safety of donor blood preparations. Activities of the Blood Establishment conform to the directives 2002/98/EC, 2005/62/EC and 2005/61/EC as well as international standards ISO-9000 and ISO 15189, and Estonian Blood Law Act (2005).
Blood establishment license is found HERE.
Departments of Blood Establishment
The Blood Establishment has three departments - production department, department of quality control and quality assurance department - and head of centre, head of nursing, development manager of donor services, donor specialists and secretaries.
- The production department coordinates donor services, chooses and accepts donors, prepares blood components and stores and issues blood components.
- The department of quality control studies donor blood and checks the quality of blood products.
- The quality assurance department develops quality policies and quality assurance system of the Blood Establishment, implements quality elements and checks their functionality inside the establishment, plans corrective activities and ensures haemovigilance.
Donor development includes arranging donor days and donor events and organizing campaigns.
Cooperations
The employees of the Blood Establishment have been participating in several EU-funded projects:
- Development of pan-European standards for the inspection of blood establishments
- EU optimal blood use
- Donor management in Europe
- Development of a pan-European SOP methodology reflecting European best practice within the area addressing the quality and safety of blood
The ongoing research project "MIMI - minorities and missing" which is funded by the European Blood Alliance, studies possibilities for calling back the "lost" primary donors.
