The Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) says it is facing a significant shortage of completed donations. This has occurred despite a steady attendance of donors and a four per cent drop in hospital requirements for blood.
However the number of completed donations has decreased by more than 10 per cent, leading to a call this week for additional donors to come forward.
Blood donations are below required levels for two reasons: one is the fallout from a haemoglobin measurement technology issue identified last November in which potential donor blood counts were overestimated; the second is because of EU regulations increasing the haemoglobin threshold below which a donation cannot be accepted. It means that just one-in-four donors’ blood can be collected and used by the IBTS. As a consequence, hospitals have been requested to conserve blood groups O negative and B negative.
The first documented human blood transfusion took place in France in 1667 but its development as a science did not occur until blood groups were discovered in 1901. Since then the practice has become part of mainstream medicine. One-in-four of us will need a blood transfusion at some point in our lives; about 70,000 patients will have transfusions in Irish hospitals this year.
One car accident victim may require up to 30 units of blood, a bleeding gastric ulcer could require anything between three and 30 units of blood and coronary artery bypass surgery may use up to five units of blood.
Following donation, a unit of blood lasts for 35 days; the IBTS aims to have seven days supply available at any given time. In recent days the supply has dropped to the equivalent of five days of normal requirements.
Just three per cent of the Irish population give blood; if you have not donated before, there are six additional mobile clinics scheduled for Sunday March 20th.
The process is painless and in the words of a poem from the IBTS website: "A blood donation costs nothing but gives much,/ It enriches those who receive/Without making poor of those who give".