Earlier this week the American Red Cross announced there was a national blood supply crisis, but a spokesman for the organization that supplies blood to over 175 hospitals in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Illinois says the LifeServe Blood Center hasn’t quite reached that point — yet.
“We’re looking at a one- to two-day supply on some of our most critical, high demand blood types and honestly we want to be in the four- to five-day supply area just to ensure that hospitals have all the blood they need to treat every patient, all the time,” said Tim Paluch, LifeServe’s marketing and PR director.
There’s typically a dip in the blood supply in the summer, Paluch said, because schools aren’t in session. “All organizations get a lot of blood from high school and colleges, so our supply just kind of goes down a touch,” Paluch said, “but on the demand side it does way up because people are busier. They’re out on boats and in cars and in the nice weather with an opportunity to maybe more frequently.”
The main concern is a major incident can drain a hospital’s blood supply quickly. “If you’re talking about a major car accident where multiple people are involved and you need dozens and dozens of units of blood, that’s the situation we don’t want to get in where the hospital that patient, those patients get to then has to start triaging for other procedures with other patients,” Paluch said.
Paluch is encouraging Iowans to go to LifeServe’s website and sign up to donate blood at one of a dozen LifeServe Donor Centers around the state. LifeServe operates Donor Centers in Ames, Ankeny, Cedar Falls, Des Moines, Fort Dodge, Johnston, Marshalltown, Mason City, Pella, Sioux City, Urbandale and West Des Moines. LifeServe has Donor Centers in the South Dakota cities of Aberdeen, Mitchell, Pierre and Yankton.
(By Mike Peterson, KMA, Shenadoah/O.Kay Henderson, Radio Iowa)