Athough the Health Minister of the Canary Government, Esther Mazón, denied it in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, the reality is that surgeries have indeed been cancelled in the islands due to a shortage of blood occurring at the Blood Bank. Her own department confirms that in the first six months of 2024, when the problem was not as pressing as it is now, a total of 47 surgeries had to be cancelled or rescheduled. This information was brought to light this week by New Canarias MP Yoné Caraballo during a presentation concerning the conflict affecting the current General Directorate of Blood Donation and Haematotherapy. Carballo requested information from Health regarding the number of surgical interventions and therapeutic treatments cancelled in the first half of 2024 due to a lack of blood in the bank of the Canarian Institute of Blood Donation and Haematotherapy. The General Directorate of Assistance Programmes of the Canary Health Service was responsible for sending the information.
In the four hospital complexes in the Canary Islands, surgeries had to be modified or cancelled due to a lack of blood, according to the data from the Directorate, which has been accessed by Atlántico Hoy.
The hospital centre most affected was the University Hospital Complex of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria. In just six months, 18 surgical interventions were cancelled at the centre known as La Candelaria due to a lack of blood. They assure that all interventions were rescheduled and carried out later. With regard to therapeutic treatments, they claim that none were cancelled during that period.
The other hospital complex in Tenerife, the University Hospital of the Canary Islands, cancelled the most interventions due to a lack of blood, totalling 12. “As for therapeutic treatments, some transfusions in patients were postponed when clinical conditions allowed it, but none that were clinically essential were suspended or postponed,” the Directorate reports.
The situation also extends to Gran Canaria. At the University Hospital Complex of Gran Canaria Dr. Negrín, 11 surgeries had to be rescheduled, but they assure that no urgent life-threatening surgeries were cancelled, “nor were non-delayable treatments administered.” In the case of Insular-Materno Infantil, there were six cancelled interventions or therapeutic treatments due to a lack of blood.
So far, the only publicly available data has been those requested by Caraballo, who has also requested data for the first six months of 2025, when the situation at the blood bank has worsened significantly, as reported by workers. This week, for example, there was a day when Las Palmas had no bags of blood type AB negative and only four in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The situation was worse for blood type B negative, with only two bags available in Las Palmas and one in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. For blood type B positive, there were eight bags in the eastern province and five in the western province. For O negative, the universal donors, there were only 34 bags in the autonomous community, while there were 35 bags of platelets. As Caraballo, a nurse by profession, explains, any accident that complicates and leads to liver trauma or uncontrolled bleeding could mean that a single patient might require between 15 and 20 bags of blood, which, given this week’s figures, would be impossible for individuals with A negative, O negative, B negative, and AB negative blood types.
In addition to the lack of blood, there is an ongoing labour conflict within the general directorate. Health has dismissed the two staff committees due to the integration of the former Canarian Institute of Blood Donation and Haematotherapy into the general directorate; however, it did so without holding union elections and just 48 hours after workers protested at the doors of the parliament. This has caused significant dissatisfaction among what used to be the union representatives for having been done without mediation and through a letter signed by the Human Resources director, leaving all workers without union representation.
