Blood banks

An early development leading to the establishment of blood banks occurred with the discovery that sodium citrate prevents clotting, allowing longer preservation of blood. 

Belgian doctor Albert Hustin performed the first non-direct transfusion on March 27, 1914, though this was a diluted solution of blood. Later in the year, Argentine doctor Luis Agote used a much less diluted solution. Both used sodium citrate as an anticoagulant.

Photo below shows Luis Agote (second from right) overseeing one of the first safe and effective blood transfusions in 1914.

The development of the possibility of the refrigerated storage of blood opened the way for the first blood banks to be established in Britain during the First World War. It was not widely used and had only twenty-six requests for blood from hospitals. By the 1930s, Stalin had established over sixty large blood centers and many more smaller ones, which covered the whole of the vast Soviet Union.

In the USA the first large-scale blood bank was not created until 1937, when Bernard Fantus the director of therapeutics at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, created a hospital laboratory that preserved and stored donor blood. Fantus described it as a "blood bank”, the first time the term had been used. By the time of the Second World War a few years later blood banks and blood transfusions were being widely used.

Jim Becker had faithfully followed the Green Bay Packers since shortly after he returned from the Korean War in 1952. He routinely sold his blood to buy season tickets, which inadvertently saved his life when he was found in 1975 to have Hemochromatosis, a genetic disorder that leads to toxic iron deposition in the body, and an early death. The only treatment is bloodletting. 

Prince Charles became the first member of the Royal Family to become a blood donor on March 1, 1985. Nurses confirmed his blood was red, not blue.

In 2004, German football club FC Union Berlin was facing bankruptcy and didn't have the €1.5 million deposit required to participate in the season. Their fans gave blood en masse through the ‘Bleed for Union’ campaign and donated the money they got to save the club.

The pet blood bank is an UK charity that asks pet owners to let their pets donate blood. Dogs have either positive or negative blood, and negative blood can be used for any dog in need.

Greyhounds are universal blood donors, and with few exceptions, blood from any greyhound can be given to any other breed of dog.