A universal blood donor is a person who is eligible to donate blood to any person in the world, except for a few set of people. The universal blood donor must have O- (O negative) blood group in order to donate it to other people.
Universal Blood Donor & RecipientA similar concept is universal blood recipient, who can take blood from any donor, irrespective of their blood groups. However, it is important for the person to have AB+ (AB positive) blood group to receive blood from anyone.
People fall under various blood groups, due to the type of antigens that are present in their blood. If a person has A antigens, he has A blood group. People with B antigens have B blood group. Those who have both these antigens in their blood are AB group. And those without any antigens have O blood group.
If a person with B antigens is donated by a person with A antigens, the two different antigens react with each other causing transfusion reaction. However, when blood with O antigens is donated to A or B blood group, it would not reach as O does not have any antigens, so it goes well with any type of blood.
But things are not as simple as they look. The ‘+’ and ‘-‘ sign play an important role in this process. If the blood, whether A, B, O or AB group, has Rhesus, or simply Rh, it becomes positive. And the type of blood without Rh is negative.
A lit bit of permutation and combination gives a number of blood group types viz. A+, A-, B+, B-, AB+, AB-, O+ and O-. As mentioned earlier, there can be transfusion when two different types of antigens are mixed. Positive and negative within the same blood group is also considered to be different type of blood and can cause blood transfusion. However, this rule doesn’t apply to people with O-, who can be universal blood donors, and people with AB+, who are universal blood recipients.
This is the reason why most blood banks have limited stock of all other kinds of blood groups, and more storage of O- blood. However, a few people have blood group ABO, which reacts to every other type of blood type, even O-. So, the donor as well as recipient must be careful while involving in this process.