On the upper floor of the Maison du Don in Montpellier, the second largest laboratory in France for the Biological Qualification of Dons (QBD) runs a real race against time every day. This platform analyzes sample tubes from the entire South of France, i.e. all of Occitanie, the PACA region and Corsica.
Trucks bring more than 25,000 tubes per day to this platform all day long. EFS technicians work day and night to analyze, process, and check the blood as quickly as possible. With one challenge: the journey of the bag, from donation to transfusion to the recipient (patient in hospital), must be completed as quickly as possible after the donation.
Analysis in Montpellier
Thus, on each bag of blood collected, various checks are carried out by the QBD laboratory technicians in Montpellier, via tubes taken upstream. The blood group is checked (ABO control). A blood count is carried out to quantify the number of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.
There are also machines, with different functions, which perform serology and screening of infectious agents (HIV, hepatitis, STIs, etc.), allowing to know if a blood bag is viable or not. In case of detection of the slightest anomaly during this analysis, the bag is stopped and incinerated, to avoid any risk of transfusion or contamination.
The whole thing takes between 24 and 48 hours maximum.
