Canadian Blood Services says its supply is in critical condition and is appealing to donors to roll up their sleeves to top up the inventory.
The blood supply in Canada is at a six-year low and officials say low attendance at clinics across the country along with a constant need is causing the supply to be used quicker than it can be replenished.
“We had a challenging summer this year. We had a higher than expected number of people that didn’t show up for their appointments. From April until just recently, we had a total of 119,000 people who didn’t keep appointments that they made across the country. There are also a high number of cancellations,” said Susan Matsumoto from Canadian Blood Services.
Canadian Blood Services issued an appeal for donations Tuesday, particularly from people with blood types O and A.
“Without the help of Canadians we may have difficulty meeting the expected hospital demand across the country. For patients, this may mean deferring elective or routine treatments,” says Mark Donnison, Canadian Blood Services vice-president of donor relations. “We are committed to doing everything that we can to bring new blood donors into the system and encourage current donors to regularly donate to ensure we don’t find ourselves in the same situation in the future.”
The organization said it will soon have less than three days' worth of inventory of major blood groups and that this is the lowest the national blood inventory has been since 2008.
“While we are extremely concerned that the reduced availability of blood may result in delays in treatment for certain patients, we are confident in the work Canadian Blood Services is doing, in collaborating with healthcare authorities to ensure patient safety,” says Lorna Warwick, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada senior national director. “We are calling on Canadians to donate blood today to ensure our system can help patients tomorrow.”
CBS regularly collects 17,000 units of blood per week and now needs an immediate infusion of 7,500 blood donations to replenish supply.
Murray Semchuck has donated over 170 times and says he wants to give back to those who helped his family out when they needed it.
“Recently our daughter-in-law gave birth to a baby boy and she had a C-section and we don’t know if she needed blood or not but we thought if she did there would be some there for her and we want to be here to try and help out especially with the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend, there’s always a need to build up the inventory and we thought we’d try and do our part to help out in some little manner,” said Semchuck.
Officials say the ideal situation is to have between five and eight days supply at any given time.
To book an appointment download the GiveBlood app, visit blood.ca or call 1 888 2 DONATE (1 888 236 6283).
(With files from ctvnews.ca)
