The Advisory group on Blood Regulation, Availability and Safety (WHO AG-BRAS) was set up by WHO in late July. Then an inaugural webinar was held in August and Professor ZHU Yongming was appointed as a member of the advisory group.

In February 2020, WHO launched the Action Framework to advance universal access to safe, effective and quality-assured blood products 2020-2023, which pointed out six major problems existing in the development of global blood system and provided six key strategic objectives for the next three years. The Action Framework, based on the resolution WHA63.12(Availability, safety and quality of blood products) and the 13th General Programme of Work 2019-2023, will be the basic programme to guide the global blood work in the future.

In response to the outbreak of COVID-19, the WHO Blood and other Products of Human origin Team(BTT, the secretariat of AG-BRAS) periodically sends out pandemic notifications and has issued three interim guidance documents on blood safety(the latest released in February this year was Maintaining a safe and adequate blood supply and collecting convalescent plasma in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic). At present, BTT is drafting documents such as the latest edition of the Clinical use of blood (module Ⅱ),  Patient blood management(PBM) implementation guidelines, Training modules for implementation of blood safety supervision，which are expected to be issued this year. Another three more guidance documents: Guidelines on maintaining a safe and adequate blood supply during Contingencies, Quality assurance guidelines for blood products, associated substances, and medical devices including in vitro diagnostics, Cost accounting guidelines for blood establishments, will be released in the next two years.

Shanghai Blood Centre, WHO Collaborating Centre for Blood Transfusion Services, has been participated in the discussion of the above mentioned documents. Most of them have been and will be translated into Chinese, to provide general guidance for the Chinese blood industry.

Translated by TANG Dingjie;

Reviewed by MA Ling, JIANG Nizhen