Dedicated Blood Donors Defy Trend Donations Fall Nationwide During Summer, But Local Drive Draws More Than 100 People

The labs of the Inland Northwest Blood Center in Spokane are clean and neat, filled with the glitter of stainless steel and the soft hum of expensive equipment.

The people who work here wear white gowns and latex gloves. They talk about antibodies, platelets, plasma and sites on a red blood cell.

But the most important element of this building on South Washington is Bruce. He sits in a recliner. He wears blue jeans. He’s waiting for his chance to have a doughnut.

Meet Bruce Hunter, 59, retired Avista worker, blood donor since the 1960s. He and more than 100 other donors came in Saturday to sit back, give blood, have a snack and maybe save someone’s life.

The center kicked off its summer T-shirt blood drive Saturday.

Nationally, the number of blood donors drops between Memorial Day and Labor Day. To help pick up the slack, the blood center tries to encourage donations during these months by giving away T-shirts. The center’s been doing this for 10 years, using a different T-shirt each time - sort of a Bloomsday for blood donors.

The center printed 10,000 T-shirts this year, but it hardly seems to need them to encourage donors. Spokane always defies the national summer trend of low donations.

“We have a great bunch of dedicated donors in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene,” communications director Bob Purdy said. “They’re our most valuable resource.”

The center’s donors are so dedicated that there were nearly 20 of them waiting in the parking lot half an hour before the center opened at 9 a.m. Saturday. Twenty is what the center usually expects over an entire day.

“We had extra staff on today, but some donors still had to wait over an hour because we had such an overwhelming response,” Purdy said. “We’d like to thank them all.”

The center helps supply blood for 24 hospitals in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. It aims to have 600 units of blood on hand at any given time - about a seven-day supply. To keep stock up, the center needs about 100 units of blood donated six days a week.

“It takes about 150 donors to come up with 100 units. Not everyone is eligible to give blood because of medications they might be taking or sickness,” Purdy said.

The center takes one unit - roughly one pint - from each person. On Saturday, 102 units had been donated with two hours left before closing at 5 p.m. - excellent for a holiday Saturday.

Nationally, only 3 percent to 5 percent of the population gives blood. That’s not enough. This year, the nation is expected to fall half a million units short of expected demand.

“That means that in some regions of the country, patients will be asked to delay elective surgery or there might be a critical-need appeal,” Purdy said.

Blood donated in Spokane stays in the Inland Northwest unless area medical facilities have such a surplus that they can spare some to other regions of the country, or the blood is at risk of outliving its useful life.

“We won’t short ourselves to take care of someone else,” Purdy said.

Each pint of blood has the potential to help three or more people. Through the use of a centrifuge, donated blood can be separated into red blood cells, which are good for 42 days; plasma, which is used for burn patients and lasts a year frozen; and platelets, which help with clotting, are often given to chemotherapy patients and last five days.

There is no synthetic substitute for any of these.

“There’s nothing to donating,” Hunter said. “There’s no pain. It’s very simple and it doesn’t take long. So many people need blood, and this is the only way we can get it.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Making a donation

The Inland Northwest Blood Center is at 507 S. Washington. Blood donations can be made Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.