Continuing growth of international registries

The international registries continue to grow. At the end of 2023, there were over 44.1 million potential donors registered in 57 countries around the world. The World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) will publish the figures for 2024 early in the summer of 2025.

The pace of the growth of the registries around the world has slowed in recent years. It is becoming more and more difficult to recruit young potential donors, as there is less emphasis on volunteering than there used to be in many places.

The age and sex distribution of registered donors remained stable between 2021 and 2023: 42 per cent of all registered donors are under the age of 36. The percentage of men overall is 43 per cent, and men’s representation in the under-36 age group remained unchanged as well, at 41 per cent. Ensuring the registries’ quality by keeping the data on registered blood stem cell donors up to date remains a constant challenge.

Forty-three per cent of all potential blood donors are registered in Europe, 23.4 per cent in North America, 19.7 per cent in Asia, 13.1 per cent in South America, 0.5 per cent in Oceania and 0.3 per cent in Africa. This geographic distribution reflects the quality of the local health systems more than it does the size of the relevant populations.

Global exchange ensures the supply

The percentage of donations provided worldwide that are destined for a recipient in another country has remained around 46 per cent for the past 15 years, dipping somewhat in 2021 due to the pandemic. Whereas Asian countries have a “self-supply rate” of 96 per cent (domestic recipients provided with domestic transplant material), Switzerland supplies only 1,5 per cent of its own transplant needs, making it the country with one of Europe’s lowest rates.
Globally, the number of blood stem cell donations increased by 2.6 per cent in 2023 compared to 2022. Blood stem cells for transplantation to an unrelated recipient were collected 23,509 times in 2023 (2022: 21,767). A total of 2,330 cord blood donations were shipped around the world (2022: 2,492). Most of the collection procedures (88 per cent, or 20,759) were collections of peripheral blood stem cells; 2,750 bone marrow collection procedures were performed.

«Whereas Asian countries have a 'self-supply rate' of 96 per cent, Switzerland supplies only 1.5 per cent of its own transplant needs, making it the country with Europe’s lowest rate.»

Tizian Demont, Data Manager

Switzerland’s solution: Reliable networking

Patients all around the world have a better chance of obtaining a suitable donation thanks to the global cooperation among registries, and Swiss patients are no exception to this. The more mixed a patient’s ethnic background is, the more challenging the search for a suitable donation becomes. This works both ways; there is significant international demand for donations from the Swiss registry.

In only three of the 201 unrelated donor transplant procedures performed in Switzerland in 2024 (2023:199) was the transplant material collected in Switzerland, despite the increase in the number of procedures.

The donations for procedures performed in Switzerland came from a total of 23 different countries (2023: 23), with Germany providing the largest number of donations (102), followed by Poland (23), the US (14) and the UK (14). These are countries that have particularly large registries.

The 90 blood stem cell donations and three cord blood donations that were collected in Switzerland in 2024 went to patients in France (17), the US (17), Germany (13), Italy (11) and 17 other countries (including Switzerland).

Origin of products 2024 for Swiss patients

Destination of products 2024 from Swiss donors

Key figures overview

Donors registered in Switzerland

44'070'000

42'674'000 (2022)

Registered cord blood units

823'000

831'000 (2022)