CAPITAL REGION — Plus: Blood supplies are up from last winter.
Minus: Donations still are expectedly short.
Each winter, the American Red Cross struggles to beef up platelet, red cell and plasma units as seasonal illnesses, snow and holiday arrangements hinder givers from showing up to regional blood banks. A deadly December storm in Western New York, which prompted the American Red Cross to cancel 9,000 blood drives.
“It was a huge blizzard,” said regional Red Cross spokesperson Abigail Adams. “Anytime there’s cancellations across the country or whatever it impacts the nation’s blood supply.”
Blood transfusions are used to treat a bevy of conditions ranging from cancer to sickle cell anemia. One car accident victim requires upwards of 100 blood units in order to survive.
Aiming to meet the demand at seasonal lows, Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, D-Rotterdam, hosts upwards of six blood drives each January — about four more than he usually hosts each month. Donation centers are held in different portions of the 111th Assembly District, which includes the eastern half of Montgomery County and most of Schenectady County.
At a Jan. 16 drive in Schenectady hosted by the state lawmaker, the Red Cross collected 26 units out of a 23-unit goal and at a Rotterdam event the next day, 39 units out of a 25-unit goal (one blood unit is roughly a pint).
“This is not a need that’s going to be you know, that they’re going to have to build and then they can go without donations for a while,” Santabarbara said. “Yeah, there’s always going to be a need for donation.”
Santabarbara first donated blood while he was in the U.S. Army Reserves more than two decades ago.
“In the military as a whole, they talk about the importance of healthcare to support our troops,” Santabarbara said. “You do have to have blood supply on hand to make sure that it’s available when our service members need it as well.”
Military blood donations began during World War II and civilian-oriented drives launched three years after the war ended. President Richard Nixon declared January National Blood Donor Month more than 50 years ago.
January 2022 marked a historic slump: so meager were supplies as a result of the COVID-19 Omicron variant that the organization had to declare its first-ever blood crisis.
And people showed up, Adams said.
“Everybody was really helpful,” said Adams. “People organized, people got out there, people rolled up their sleeves and nobody wants to see a cancer patient have to wait for treatment because there’s not enough blood on the shelf.”
Donors can choose between giving platelets, plasma, red blood, or whole blood, a combination of the three’. In an average year, collected are about 13.6 million units of whole blood and red blood cells.
Power red donations allow givers to donate two doses of red blood cells. Santabarbara credits the latter for pushing his goal past the finish line at the Jan. 16 Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science event.
“That’s big,” he said. “It’s really big to have something like that.”
Tyler A. McNeil can be reached at 518-527-7659 or [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @TylerAMcNeil
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