Interview with Ilgiz Vafin

Every year, the Blood Service holds an All-Russian contest of professional skills, where it identifies the best doctors in the industry, the best teams and donor projects. In 2024, a representative forum once again brought together delegates from all regions of Russia in Moscow. Ilgiz Akhmatovich Vafin, the chief physician of the Kuzbass Blood Center, won in the Best Transfusiologist Doctor category. We talked to the laureate about his medical and scientific work, as well as about the prospects for blood and bone marrow donation in Kuzbass.

As the head of the Kuzbass Blood Centre, you are actively engaged in scientific research as a transfusiologist and present reports at conferences. How do you find time for everything?

Transfusiology is a very interesting science, it is related to both production and clinical activities, and they are logically interconnected. It is not difficult to find time for interesting and favorite things. The staff helps me a lot, it's always easy with them.

How is the donor movement developing in Kuzbass? What's new in recent years?

The donor movement in our region is active and at the required level. We make every effort to draw attention to donation. Interest in donation begins to grow and it is important to attract new donors in a way that ensures their participation is well-organized and distributed over time. Promoting blood donation is also not a trivial process. We cannot work in a formulaic manner, repeating the same appeals. The Coordination Council for Donation under the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation provides great assistance in diversifying the forms of work of the Blood Service. The theme of priority development of society announced by the President is combined with blood donation, which provides a wide range of opportunities to involve different social groups of people in donation. 2023 is the Year of the Teacher and Mentor, and 2024 is the Year of the Family. For each title theme, the Civic Chamber thinks through promotions. This gives us a clear direction of work and a good incentive — what to offer people, what to focus information work on, which campaigns are best to carry out in order to achieve maximum public response and engagement.

What results of the work of the Blood Service — doctors, volunteers, donors — in Kemerovo Oblast can you note?

The most important result is the sufficiency of donor blood components that hospitals request. We set the task to fully respond to hospital requests and today we provide them with 21 types of blood components. Another achievement is that hospitals practically do not hear about us. Because everything is enough, there is a calm planned work on supplies. As for volunteers, thanks to our managers and our departments for recruiting donor personnel, young people in Kuzbass are active, willingly join Blood Service projects and help us a lot.

What reserves in terms of attracting donors and popularizing blood and bone marrow donation do you see?

We have been actively engaged in corporate blood donation for several years. Sberbank, Kemerovo State University, and other large companies and enterprises, as well as mines, respond willingly to our calls and stimulate the donor movement in their teams. We regularly visit them with lectures, talking not only about blood donation but also about bone marrow cell donation, and we see the real result of our joint efforts. Over the past three years, about 7,000 people have joined the Federal Register of Bone Marrow Donors, and 8 people have become actual bone marrow donors.

What are the breakthroughs, successes, and achievements in terms of blood management technologies?

One of the latest achievements is the cryopreservation of cells. All other technologies have been working successfully for a long time. Cryopreservation is necessary, firstly, to create reserves and plan assistance more flexibly, and secondly, it preserves excess donated blood and saves precious cells for the future.

The most important issue is the training of personnel for the Blood Service. How is this going in the Kuzbass region?

Every year, the Ministry of Health offers us places in residency programs to obtain the specialty of transfusiologist, so at the Blood Center we practically do not experience a shortage of such specialists. We are fully staffed.

Tell us about your scientific work. Which areas are most significant for you? What discoveries have you made?

It is quite challenging to make discoveries in transfusiology. Most of the time, we need to focus on processing statistical data. Based on certain indicators, we can identify areas where we need to strengthen our efforts. For example, we are currently creating a map of the genotypes of red bone marrow cells in the indigenous peoples of Kuzbass. If we know that the corresponding genotypes and phenotypes are in demand, we can freeze them and have a biobank for these people.

And our traditional question: what would you like to wish to donors and those who are just about to join the donor movement?

I would like to wish donors a long and successful commitment to donating. This lifestyle contributes to excellent physical and mental health. To those who have not yet made a decision, I wish to take the first step, come to the Blood Service, and find comfort for the soul and body in donation.

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