MORE BLOOD DONORS NEEDED AT WHAKATANE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 59, 21 June 1950, Page 5

MORE BLOOD DONORS NEEDED AT WHAKATANE

Probably most of the 40 or so donors who give their blood when it is required to patients at the Whakatane District Hospital do not think of themselves as heroes but they, along with the other hundreds throughout New Zealand who give a free service in what has saved many lives, are doing an invaluable service to the community. Every year when they are called upon donors literally give their life’s blood for the sake of others.

At Whakatane the supply of blood is so small that no blood bank is kept as is the case in other centres. Locally a list of names are kept on hand with each donor’s blood group. When a transfusion is necessary the donor is called and the blood taken from him direct to the patient. Transfusing blood, although now a common occurrence in hospitals is a tricky business. Each person is in one of four blood groups and before a transfusion can be made the group of the donor and patient must be proved to be the same. However, there is one group, known as group 0, which can be given to almost any patient. There are 20 of these universal donors at Whakatane.

In the larger hospitals blood is taken from donors and stored. If the blood is not used within the first three weeks after it is taken from a donor, it is considered overage and if suitable processed into blood plasma which can be stored for a period of up to 18 months. There is no processing plant in New Zealand so that most of the plasma is imported from the United States. The quantity of plasma which can be made from the blood taken from each donor costs the dollar-equi-Vcilent of about £B. But this cannot be done at Whakatane and so a list of donors With blood for all groups must kept in hand. For this reason new recruits are needed all the time to keep Ihe panel of donors up to full strength. The number available change constantly for obvious reasons and again there are donors on the panel who are rarely called on because their blood type is relatively plentiful. This tends to increase the burden on the generosity of the donors with blood types more in demand.