Last week Canadian Blood Services (CBS) made a call out on eligible people across Canada to book a blood donation appointment to help them replenish their supply.\u00a0 Summer is a busy time of year, and many folks are not available for regular blood donations.\u00a0 However, this summer the numbers of donors is lower than anticipated.\u00a0 Since June 1st, the blood supply has declined by nearly 20%.<\/p>\n
There are now limited days on hand of several blood types \u2014 levels that are not sustainable for patient care should this trend not reverse itself, states the CBS website.\u00a0 Heading into the August long weekend makes this even more concerning as again, many folks are on the go and thus there tends to be more vehicle accidents and more emergency services, which means more of every blood type is needed.<\/p>\n
CBS needs 18,000 appointments a week<\/p>\n
Brett Lawrence is the Community Development Manager for CBS in Winnipeg.\u00a0 He says every week, CBS\u00a0needs approximately 18,000 booked blood donation appointments to keep pace with hospital demand in the country. However, over the past six weeks, appointments have fallen short by 1,500 to 2,500 each week, requiring a draw on existing inventory to meet patient needs.<\/p>\n
“And if that trend continues, that could start to impact being able to meet the needs of patients,” says Lawrence.<\/p>\n
Lawrence notes donors of all blood types are needed now to help replenish the blood supply and keep pace with hospital demand.<\/p>\n
“This isn’t saying something like, ‘Oh, come when you can’. It’s saying, ‘We need you today. We need you to visit\u00a0www.blood.ca<\/a>\u00a0or phone 1-888 2-DONATE ((1-888-236-6283)<\/a>\u00a0to book an appointment,” he shares.\u00a0“So, we don’t exactly know the exact problem. What we do know is the effect that’s happening is that big drop in inventory. And luckily, we do know the solution. And the solution is an immediate call for donors.”<\/p>\n RELATED LINKS:<\/p>\n More appointments available across Manitoba<\/p>\n Canadian Blood Services\u00a0operates\u00a0a permanent donor\u00a0centre\u00a0in Winnipeg and supplements it with mobile blood donor clinics in Brandon, and other communities such as Portage, Morden, Winkler, Steinbach, and Selkirk.\u00a0\u00a0To provide more opportunities to give, additional weekend appointments have been added at many donor centres and whole blood donation appointments are available at several plasma donor centres.<\/p>\n “If folks happen to be in Selkirk on August 11th or August 25th, we are in a big need of donors for those mobiles at the Selkirk Recreation Complex. We have about 200 open appointments for those two dates in August.\u00a0 This coming week,\u00a0July 30th, if folks happen to be in the Pembina Valley area in Winkler, we still have about 30 appointments open for July 30th,” explains Lawrence.<\/p>\n “So that Thursday going into the long weekend is especially important, not just because of the national inventory need that we have right now, but also we are always in need of bringing in as much blood as we can going into long weekends\u00a0– around Canada today, we saw the same thing. That’s when our inventory took a big hit because folks aren’t around for the long weekend.”<\/p>\n “So, folks who are around during that time and in those areas, I’m really emphasizing they come,” he adds.<\/p>\n “And lastly, I’ll say if any folks are coming to Winnipeg over the long weekend, from now until about early September, we have\u00a0almost 3,700 open appointments at our Winnipeg clinic, 777 William Avenue. So, there’s an abundance of appointments available out there if folks are in the area,” says Lawrence.<\/p>\n Donors urged to book now<\/p>\n If you’ve already booked an appointment, keeping it is essential. If you can’t make your appointment, cancelling in advance allows someone else to donate in your place.<\/p>\n Eligible donors are urged to book an appointment as soon as possible at\u00a0blood.ca<\/a>, through the GiveBlood app or by calling\u00a01-888-2-DONATE. If you’re unable to donate today, please make an appointment sometime this summer.<\/p>\n For more information on becoming a new donor, returning as a donor who hasn’t given for a while, or to book an appointment at any of the\u00a0Canadian Blood Services<\/a>\u00a0donor sites, visit the\u00a0CBS website.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week Canadian Blood Services (CBS) made a call out on eligible people across Canada to book a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-831467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}