Call: Donor selection and protection

The EU is required by its founding treaty to ensure that human health is protected as part of all its policies, and to work with the EU countries to improve public health, prevent human illness and eliminate sources of danger to physical and mental health. The 3rd Health Programme has 4 overarching objectives:

1. Promote health, prevent diseases and foster supportive environments for healthy lifestyles taking into account the 'health in all policies' principle,
2. Protect Union citizens from serious cross-border health threats,
3. Contribute to innovative, efficient and sustainable health systems,
4. Facilitate access to better and safer healthcare for Union citizens.

The priority for this action is to increase the safety of donation and clinical application of tissues and cells and/or blood by optimising the procedures for donor selection and protection. While EU legislation defines the donor selection criteria in general terms, standardised procedures for gathering the necessary donor information are not developed at EU level. This is a high priority for these sectors because the success of transplantation, assisted reproduction and transfusion programmes relies heavily on achieving robust procedures for both the selection and protection of donors.

The objectives are: 

1. to explore existing practices for the selection and protection of donors, including the gathering of donor medical and behavioural history, with particular emphasis on the design of effective questions for donors or their families, and 
2. to reach agreement on best practice for donor selection and protection procedures and questionnaires and develop tools to support its implementation.

This action should result in the development of common EU guidance on the selection and protection of donors and model questionnaires for use when interviewing prospective donors and/or donor families. The questions should be tested and validated to demonstrate that they are effective in terms of eliciting the information required for the application of exclusion criteria as defined in the EU legislation.

Description of the activities to be funded under a call for proposals

This action will bring together individuals and organisations from the tissues and cells and/or blood sectors with donor-facing expertise in those fields (e.g. physicians, key donation personnel from hospital to authority level) to address the following activities:

1. collect and compare EU and national donor selection and protection criteria based on a thorough evaluation of risks for donors and recipients;
2. identify the information needed from donors or their families to allow the application of appropriate donor deferral or exclusion criteria for the protection of recipients; and
3. propose approaches to control and minimize these risks, particularly by developing, testing and validating procedures that should gather complex and often sensitive information through an easily understood series of questions taking into account socio-economic, cultural and emotional factors.

These approaches should include guidelines for screening donors, a proposal for a standardised donor and donor family questionnaire and proposals for short and long-term care and follow-up of living donors.

This action should build on previous EU-funded projects across the area of substances of human origin, in particular in organ donation/transplantation (e.g. DOMAINE, ELIPSY, ELPAT, and ACCORD). Involvement of relevant professional associations and competent authorities is strongly encouraged.

Grant applications are eligible if submitted by legal persons. More specifically, the applicants must be legally established organisations, public authorities, public sector bodies, in particular research and health institutions, universities and higher education establishments. The application shall state the legal status of the applicant.

Applicants participating in a project proposal have to be different legal entities (i.e. independent from each other) from at least 3 countries participating in the Health Programme. Proposals which involve fewer applicants will be rejected. 

1. Find the call on the participant portal:
   • https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/index.html 
2. Create an account to submit a proposal:
   • http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/organisations/register.html 
3. Register all partners via the beneficiary registry:
   • http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/organisations/register.htm