Castilla y León's Hemotherapy and Blood Bank Foundation (Fundación de Hemoterapia y Hemodonación de Castilla y León) obtained ENAC’s accreditation for some External Quality Assurance for Diagnostic Immunology Laboratories (Garantía Externa de Calidad para Laboratorios de Inmunología Diagnóstica, GECLID) program schemes.

Specifically, the accredited activity includes programs for detecting and identifying anti-HPA antibodies, HLA high-resolution typing, celiac disease typing, KIR typing and cross-testing for cytotoxicity or flow cytometry. These are essential activities for ensuring the success of organ and bone marrow transplants or detecting the presence of certain antigens that help determine the propensity to suffer from autoimmune diseases (celiac disease, ankylosing spondylitis) or sensitivity to certain medications.

This is explained by Dr. M. Carmen Martín Alonso, Immunologist and Head of GECLID Program at the Castilla y León Hemotherapy and Blood Bank Centre (CHEMCYL): “Within diagnostic immunology, transplantation field testing are the most difficult since they require training to interpret them, they are technically complex and critical decisions that are based on them, both in selecting compatible recipient donor couples, and to ensuring the best possible evolution after the transplant”.

Regarding the reasons for choosing this accreditation, the doctor points out that its importance lies in the fact that "laboratories get evidence, which is often required by their organizations or by bodies such as the EFI (European Federation for Immunogenetics)", but that "the main contribution is to reinforce the safety of immunologists when carrying out their work and the information that enables them to detect possible problems and solve them”. Therefore, she adds that by choosing accredited services "the professional has the guarantee that the exercises have been carried out with total transparency, traceability and in the same conditions for all participants, in addition to knowing that all the necessary considerations have been followed to ensure the reports they receive are objective and reliable”.

The External Quality Assurance for Diagnostic Immunology Laboratories (GECLID) program began in 2011 thanks to an initiative by the Spanish Society of Immunology (SEI), which "had been doing sample exchange workshops for 20 years and proposed a control program as a qualitative leap to give greater solidity to these tools which our society had always considered essential", says Martín Alonso. Likewise, among the motivations for starting up this service, she highlights that at that time "it would not only be the first program in Spain for providing external quality assurance aimed at immunology laboratories, but it would also be important internationally, given that there are very few intercomparison programs for immunology”.