No-shows contributing to blood shortage, official says

[Praxius]

Elective surgeries may need to be cancelled to maintain stable supply
No-shows contributing to blood shortage, official says

Would-be donors who forget or refuse to keep appointments at blood banks are contributing to a shortage in blood supplies, an official warns.

Canadian Blood Services issued a nationwide warning Wednesday that its reserves have dropped about 40 per cent over the last two months. Instead of having enough blood to supply the country for six days, it currently has enough for two.

Some hospitals are even warning that elective surgeries will need to be postponed because of sharp drops in donations.

"We've seen fewer donors coming into our clinics," said Paul McGrath, CBS's regional communications manager for Atlantic Canada.

Contributing to the problem are "no-shows," or people who agree to come to a blood drive, but never make it. McGrath said the problem has become especially pointed in St. John's, where he works, and where the blood donation rate has plummeted.

"We do have the highest no-show rate in Canada right now, the highest number of donors who book an appointment and then don't show up — 35 per cent of our appointments are currently no-shows in Newfoundland and Labrador," McGrath said.

McGrath added that his heart sinks whenever he hears an ambulance, as he fears there will not be enough blood to handle a major accident.

The situation applies in communities across the country.

Halifax shortage monitored 'hour by hour'

"At this point our blood supply is really low. We have to monitor it, hour by hour," said Dr. Irene Sadek, who works at Halifax's Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre.

"We have to triage every blood request, for every patient, and make sure were giving them the minimum that they need. "

Sadek told CBC News on Wednesday that the Queen Elizabeth may need to consider stopping some elective services so that hospital's blood supply remains stable.

Canadian Blood Services is urgently asking Canadians to make appointments to donate blood.

"At this point, the only remedy to the situation is to get more donors coming into our clinics," McGrath said in an interview.

Canadian Blood Services, which manages the blood system in all provinces except Quebec, said hospital demand for blood has increased by 3.3 per cent, while donations across the country have dropped by 0.7 per cent.

Maybe people just don't care?

 

[Avro]

They'll care when they need it.

 

[tay]

A little more than two months after the national blood agency called on Canadians to respond to its “critical” need for donations, the national supply is once again slipping.

In June, when Canada’s blood supply dipped below 12,000 units, donors lined up to restore it to a 23,000-unit peak (Canadian Blood Services says it needs 20,000-25,000 units in its inventory to adequately serve hospitals across the country).

But slowly, it has begun to fall and agency officials worry it could soon return to a critical state. By August’s civic holiday, inventory had already fallen back to nearly 18,000 units.

The problem is chronic, part of an ongoing trend the agency struggles with.

It is led in large part by the reluctance of many Canadians to book return appointments. As a result, supply continues to return to dangerous levels, according to Michael Betel, CBS director of donor relations.

“The response across the country was truly incredible. But what happens is when we have critical need messaging, donors respond and when the urgency drops, so do collections,” he said. “We’re constantly working to try to impress upon people the need to continue to give.

That need for blood is constant and every single day patients need blood products.”

In part, the agency’s collection challenges are also self-inflicted.

In the last year, the agency moved the time that women must wait between donations from 56 to 84 days to allow for proper recovery of iron levels, while also bumping required hemoglobin levels for male donors from 125 grams per litre to 130.

Men who have sex with men must still be abstinent for a year before they can donate, a waiting period that was reduced from five years in August of 2016 and from a lifetime deferral less than three years before that.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/08/11/why-canadas-blood-donation-problem-persists.html