Please be assured that we do not defer donors from blood donation just because of their nationality or language skills! But, the safety of both donor and recipient is our guiding principle: Your own safety as a donor: We have to make sure that your current health situation allows you to safely donate blood an to recover well from your blood donation, and The safety of our patients: We have to make sure that blood products are safe. From every blood donation we manufacture a very potent and highly effective medical drug. We – as the manufacturer of this medicinal product – have to ensure that all blood donations are conform with the pertinent legal regulations laid down by the Bundesärztekammer and the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute (the German Authorities representing the medical and pharmaceutical law) in order to maintain the quality and safety of all blood products.  According to these legal requirements, a detailed questionnaire containing a number of questions about your individual health and medical history, is given to all donors before each donation. The questionnaire forms the basis for expressing and discussing very personal and intimate details with our medical staff at the donation sites and therefore needs to be filled out without external help.  Our medical staff needs to discuss and communicate with our donors about their medical history and their present medical situation in detail. Unfortunately, not all our medical staff is able to speak English to such an extent that they can communicate freely with our donors. Thus, the blood service Baden-Württemberg – Hessen has decided not to provide donor questionnaires in English at the moment since the main issue is the possibility to communicate in a common language with our donors on the questions that may arise out of the questionnaire.  Also, in case of medical problem during the donation itself, a communication between donor, nurse and physician has to be ensured in order to protect the donor safety before, during and after the donation. Again, we cannot ensure that our staff will have the required English language skills. Our donors do not have to be fully fluent or perfect in German, but they need to understand enough German to be able to ask questions themselves, to answer questions in return and to be able to make themselves understood in case of problems.