<P> The world's first blood donor service was established in 1921 by the secretary of the British Red Cross, Percy Oliver . Volunteers were subjected to a series of physical tests to establish their blood group . The London Blood Transfusion Service was free of charge and expanded rapidly . By 1925, it was providing services for almost 500 patients and it was incorporated into the structure of the British Red Cross in 1926 . Similar systems were established in other cities including Sheffield, Manchester and Norwich, and the service's work began to attract international attention . Similar services were established in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Australia and Japan . </P> <P> Vladimir Shamov and Sergei Yudin in the USSR pioneered the transfusion of cadaveric blood from recently deceased donors . Yudin performed such a transfusion successfully for the first time on March 23, 1930 and reported his first seven clinical transfusions with cadaveric blood at the Fourth Congress of Ukrainian Surgeons at Kharkiv in September . Also in 1930, Yudin organized the world's first blood bank at the Nikolay Sklifosovsky Institute, which set an example for the establishment of further blood banks in different regions of the Soviet Union and in other countries . By the mid-1930s the Soviet Union had set up a system of at least 65 large blood centers and more than 500 subsidiary ones, all storing "canned" blood and shipping it to all corners of the country . </P> <P> One of the earliest blood banks was established by Frederic Durán - Jordà during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 . Duran joined the Transfusion Service at the Barcelona Hospital at the start of the conflict, but the hospital was soon overwhelmed by the demand for blood and the paucity of available donors . With support from the Department of Health of the Spanish Republican Army, Duran established a blood bank for the use of wounded soldiers and civilians . The 300--400 ml of extracted blood was mixed with 10% citrate solution in a modified Duran Erlenmeyer flask . The blood was stored in a sterile glass enclosed under pressure at 2 ° C. During 30 months of work, the Transfusion Service of Barcelona registered almost 30,000 donors, and processed 9,000 liters of blood . </P> <P> In 1937 Bernard Fantus, director of therapeutics at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, established the first hospital blood bank in the United States . In creating a hospital laboratory that preserved, refrigerated and stored donor blood, Fantus originated the term "blood bank". Within a few years, hospital and community blood banks were established across the United States . </P>

Where was the first blood bank established in 1931