Condor called upon to rush blood product to sister isle

The mistake was discovered at 4pm on Friday.

During the pandemic it has been a greater challenge than normal to ensure a continuous supply of platelets – small, colorless cell fragments in blood that form clots and stop or prevent bleeding – are available for urgent patient use.

The mistaken delivery was

for a very short-dated blood product, with unpredictable usage and would

be potentially lifesaving for a bleeding patient.

Currently there are no scheduled flights between Guernsey and Jersey and only services to Southampton on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, meaning there was no

way to transport the blood by air until Monday.

Head of blood transfusion and blood donor services Jacqui Wheatley said as soon as they saw the platelets had arrived in error they also realised that there would not be another flight from Southampton until Monday afternoon to either island, and Jersey would be left without the necessary stock of platelets until late on Monday.

‘Some quick research informed us that the final Condor Clipper to Jersey had just arrived into Guernsey and hadn’t yet departed,’ she said.

‘Although we haven’t used Condor for blood transportation since the Icelandic ash cloud, we were able to contact their freight manager, Karl Margetts, for assistance. Thanks to Karl’s immediate response the platelets were loaded on board around 10 minutes before departure and Jersey received the delivery later that evening.’

Jersey Pathology Department laboratory manager Julie Bellamy said they were very grateful to get the product.

‘Thanks to the swift thinking of our Guernsey counterparts, the platelets ordered for Jersey arrived in good order and prevented us from having a shortage of platelets left on island over the weekend,’ she said.

‘This is yet another great example of how our island laboratories work in collaboration for the good of our patients.’

Both islands thanked the ferry company for making this possible.