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Blood donations have fallen to catastrophic levels. Experts say young people need to step up. (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Changes to the requirements for donating blood coupled with the pandemic have led to a drop-off in the number of teens and young adults donating blood.

It was a white T-shirt bearing the likeness of Snoopy wearing shades and leaning effortlessly against the iconic American Red Cross logo that prompted a surge in blood donations in the spring of 2023.

“Be cool. Give blood,” the shirt urged. The message — on young people, anyway — was effective. More than 70,000 people under age 35 responded to the call, rolling up their sleeves and giving blood in exchange for the coveted tees.

The need for blood is urgent. Over the holidays, the Red Cross had 7,000 fewer units of blood available than were needed by hospitals, said Dr. Eric Gehrie, the executive medical director of the American Red Cross. The organization speculated it would need about 8,000 additional donations every week in January to ensure that hospitals are fully supplied, he added.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

pay $98 to see my GP to write a therapeutic phlebotomy order so I can then go to Red Cross to have them take my blood and throw it straight in the bin.

My blood has too much iron so it can't be donated.

In my 20s I donated every 8 weeks on the dot. My iron levels were low enough for my blood to be accepted and the regular donations kept them within a healthy range for me and a healthy range for the blood recipient. But now days I can't seem to maintain low enough levels for 8 weeks to be able to donate.

The kicker is that I'm still on the mailing lists so I get multiple texts a week asking me to come in and donate.

After the therapeutic phlebotomy you can't do a normal blood donation for 8 weeks even if your levels are fine, but my iron is usually already too high by week 6, so at no point do I have the opportunity to donate. I've tried getting two TP orders back to back so I can go around the 5 or 6 week mark, but my levels aren't high enough so I can only get the TP orders every 12 weeks or so anyway.

Other than iron, my blood is fine, and I'm a rare and in demand blood type too, I wish there was some way they could filter the iron out.

I'm sick of paying money to have my blood thrown away only to get Texts from Red Cross asking for my blood to be donated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've donated only couple of years and then decided to give up since hospitals, even with social insurance, sell my blood to other hospitals and are making a bank. I'll happily donate to whoever needs my silly AB+ type, but giving it to others to sell, I want some of the benefits.

Am not sure what TP is, but it sucks they would just throw the blood out. Can't they at least extract plasma out of it or something?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

TP is therapeutic phlebotomy, basically modern day blood letting to treat hemochromatosis.

They can't extract the plasma because the equipment that does that is designed to be connected back into the donor's system to return their red blood cells, and the red blood cells is what I need to get rid of. They dont have any legal way of just, not hooking me back up to get the red cells back.

But it is silly, because surely you could just hook the "return tubes" up to a bag that then gets thrown out? There just isn't a policy or procedure that allows it. Or maybe there's a fundamental problem with the final blood product I don't understand as a layperson.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

That's really odd indeed. Then again when I got PRP treatment for my joints they tossed everything away apart from plasma.