Introduction Any mention of important medical advancements in the last millennium should acknowledge and shed some light onto the impact blood donation or more specifically blood component therapy has on the modern medical world The significance of this being that the blood donated by one person can be separated into its components and used to benefit several patients rather than the one and ensures blood centres have all the blood types and the blood components to provide for the patients This review explores the range of the cells produced by the hemopoietic system and how this system directly affects which blood products a person needs to treat certain diseases Yet in doing so introduces the rare risks associated with this procedure and the way public health approaches these issues History Although processes like bloodletting has been performed from the time of Hippocrates the transfer of blood from one organism to another was first recorded in the mid seventeenth century In 1666 written evidence was shown of transferring the blood of one animal into another and then the blood of an animal to a human at Oxford This caused many fatalities due to ABO blood types not being discovered until over 230 years later by Karl Landsteiner yet this showed people knew the importance of blood in medical procedures
