Blood Center Is Working Overtime Donations Tapered Off Over Holidays While Demand Went Up
The Inland Northwest Blood Center is keeping the doors open in Coeur d’Alene and Spokane today to try to catch up with the steadily increasing demand for the region’s red blood cells.
Donors can drop in to give a pint between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Donors gave 347 pints in Spokane, Coeur d’Alene and through the blood center’s mobile vans Thursday. Simultaneously, demand topped 170 units on Thursday. An average day would be closer to 100.
Another 179 pints were drawn by late Friday afternoon across Inland Blood Center’s territory. But it will take continued diligent donating to push the blood center’s stocks from the marginal two- to three-day level to the more solid seven-day supply.
“We are keeping up with the demand,” said Lisa Turpin of the blood center, “and hoping to make some headway.”
But the blood center doesn’t figure it will be back in the comfort zone until sometime next week.
High demand over the holidays, combined with lower-than-normal donations, caused the critical shortage in the Spokane area. In one case, a person undergoing surgery needed more than 200 units of blood.
But the blood shortage extends across the region. The American Red Cross office in Portland announced this week it can only cover half of the demand from the hospitals it serves in Washington, Alaska and Oregon.
Faithful donors say there’s another problem: New federal rules are keeping their arteries off limits - especially if they logged a total of six months in England between 1980 and 1996.
Susan Carlson has been giving blood for the decade since she returned from her tour in England as a military spouse. She gave in October. And was turned away in December.
There’s a new theory that a “mad cow” disease epidemic in the United Kingdom during the 1980s may have tainted the blood of anyone who lived or vacationed there for a total of six months over the 16 years. Forty-eight people in the United Kingdom have died of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is potentially linked to the “mad cow” malady.
Carlson spent an hour waiting at the blood center in late December before she found out her cells no longer pass muster.
“People need to know not to go in and waste their time if they lived in England during those 16 years,” Carlson said.
Carlson predicts a huge impact on blood donations in the Spokane area, given the number of military personnel living here who spent time in the United Kingdom.
An estimated 2 percent of the nation’s blood donors will have to stop giving because of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s new rule, officials at the blood center said. It’s too soon to know how it is affecting donations in the Spokane area.
The new blood donation rules also place some restrictions on people who lived in Korea and may have had malaria. And people who have taken cocaine via a nose straw also are now not wanted for blood donations, said Dr. Judy Grishaber, medical director at the blood center.