History

Background and creation

In 1988, the Transfusion Center of the Community of Madrid was created through Decree 44/1988 of May 6, within the Regional Health Service, dependent on the then Ministry of Health.

• Its approval follows the provisions of Royal Decree 1945/1985 whose purposes are "to regulate the donation of human blood and its components, avoid the dispersion of means in its typification and fractionation, as well as reduce the high costs that the current lack of coordination entails" . From this moment on, the functions and personnel of the Institute of Hematology and Hemotherapy of Madrid are integrated into the Transfusion Center, which has its headquarters in provisional facilities adjacent to the Niño Jesús Hospital.
•  On December 12, 1994, the Agreement on blood donation was signed between the National Institute of Health and the Health Department of the Community of Madrid. The purpose of this agreement is to configure the Blood Transfusion Center "as a Regional Center with exclusive competence in the planning and programming of blood donation in the territorial scope of the Community of Madrid". With this objective, the CTCM assumes the functions, activities and resources developed up to now by the Brotherhood of Blood Donors of Madrid, in relation to the planning and programming of external collections. By virtue of this agreement, the staff of the Brotherhood is also integrated into the CTCM. Likewise, the cessation of the external collections carried out by the hospital centers, which are now carried out from the Transfusion Center, was agreed. The internal collections that are determined remain in the hospitals.
• In 1997, the Cord Blood Bank (BSC) was created in the CTCM, which from that moment assumed the work that the Cord Blood Bank of Hospital 12 de Octubre, created a year earlier, had been doing. Thus, it is configured as the only Bank of this type in the Community of Madrid. The BSC of the Transfusion Center analyses, submits to quality controls and stores the units of cord blood collected in affiliated hospitals. Today, there are twenty Madrid hospitals that send the cord blood donated and collected by their obstetric services, to the BSC of the Transfusion Center. Once analyzed, the BSC also deals with including the genetic profile of these donations in the Bone Marrow Donor Registry (REDMO),

New headquarters

• The Transfusion Center, located until 2003 in the provisional facilities of the Niño Jesús Hospital, moved on September 24 of that year to a newly created building in the Valdebernardo district, Avenida de la Democracia. This building, which has 13.000 operational square meters, was born equipped with the most advanced technologies.
• In 2005, the hospitals ceased their blood processing activity, which became progressively centralized in the CTCM. Fixed donation points remain in hospitals.
• Throughout 2008 and at the same time that seven new hospitals were being inaugurated: Hospital Infanta Cristina, Hospital Infanta Sofia, Hospital del Tajo, Hospital del Sureste, Hospital Infanta Leonor, Hospital Infanta Elena and Hospital del Henares, the Transfusion Center opened in them the corresponding donation points managed by their own staff. Thus, blood donation services located in hospitals increased to the current 32.
• In January 2013, by virtue of the agreement signed between the Transfusion Center of the Community of Madrid (CTCM) and the HM Hospitales group, a Blood Donation Unit came into operation in this private group. All donated blood is sent to the CTCM for processing, analysis, and distribution.
• On December 20, 2013, the Ministry of Health and the Spanish Red Cross sign an Agreement by which the Transfusion Center of the Community of Madrid becomes the only center of this nature in the region and as such is in charge of planning the needs Hemotherapy centers throughout the community, coordinates blood promotion and donation campaigns and exclusively performs blood processing, analysis, and storage and distribution of blood components to all public and private hospitals in the region. The street collections carried out from mobile units are now managed by the Red Cross, now an Extraction Unit for blood donation, linked by the aforementioned agreement to the Transfusion Center of the Community of Madrid.