The French haemovigilance system

Haemovigilance is a national system of surveillance and alarm, from blood c ollection to the follow-up of the recipients, gathering and analysing all u ntoward effects of blood transfusion in order to correct their cause and pr event recurrence, In France haemovigilance was created by law and notificat ion of transfusion incidents is a legal obligation. The haemovigilance netw ork associates local correspondents in each hospital and blood centre with regional co-ordinators and is centralised by the Agence Francaise du Sang. After 4 years the incident reporting rate is 2.3 per 1000 allogeneic blood components transfused, justifying for example increased efforts in the prev ention of bacteria-associated transfusion reactions, haemolytic transfusion reactions or vascular overload. However, haemovigilance still has to be st renghtened by improved information management or further progress in standa rdisation from one region to the other. The most important factor of succes s is collaboration between blood centres and hospitals. Haemovigilance clea rly is the ultimate quality indicator of a transfusion service.