Meeting with Head of the Federal Medical-Biological Agency Veronika Skvortsova

The Head of the FMBA briefed the President on the agency's measures to develop Russia's blood service and promote blood donation, as well as on its work in occupational, maritime and sports medicine.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: I suggest we discuss several topics. We already have the blood service, occupational medicine and sports medicine, as well as anything else you consider appropriate and necessary to bring up for discussion today.

Please, go ahead.

Head of the Federal Medical-Biological Agency Veronika Skvortsova: Thank you very much, Mr President.

The Federal Medical-Biological Agency is the national coordinator of the blood service. It is responsible not only for collecting blood and meeting the country's needs for blood and its components, but also for ensuring their safety, preventing transfusion-transmitted infections, and developing all the necessary innovations in transfusion medicine.

Given the importance of this area, particularly in recent years, we have placed considerable emphasis on promoting blood donation as a special culture of public service. Together with virtually all federal executive bodies, civil society organisations and youth associations, we are implementing a wide range of initiatives aimed at promoting blood donation.

As a result, since 2020 we have increased the number of donors by more than 20 percent, while also raising the average number of donations per donor to 2.3. As a result, we now have more than 1.5 million donors a year, and the number of donations has exceeded 3.5 million.

This has enabled us to increase whole-blood collection by 47 percent since 2020. We now collect more than 2.7 million litres of whole blood a year. Blood plasma collection has also increased by 37 percent over the same period, to more than one million litres.

Vladimir Putin: How many donors do we have now?

Veronika Skvortsova: More than 1.5 million people. But the number in our database is considerably higher - more than 12 million.

To be continued.