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For months now, the Pine Tree Chapter of the American Red Cross has been in short supply of blood. While the group is scrambling to meet daily minimums, the management remains hard-pressed to figure out why donations have fallen.
Lisa Ferzel, a donor recruiter for the American Red Cross in Northern New England who works at the Bangor location, explained that since no synthetic substitute has been created, blood can only come from volunteers.
“Blood cannot be manufactured,” she said, adding the cause of the shortage is “the million dollar question.”
Blood donations are used to help trauma victims, cancer patients, premature babies and others, but in recent months donor numbers have been down. The result of this decline in donations is a shortage of reserve blood supplies that has persisted since early July.
Ferzel said the summer months generally see a decrease in the amount of donors due to heat, but this summer posed more troubles. Higher temperatures this summer than New England has seen in the past led to the cancellation of many blood drives.
Ferzel explained between September and October alone, the Bangor location of the Red Cross was short by more than 800 pints of blood.
The daily goal for blood donations is around 300 pints at the Bangor Red Cross, according to Ferzel.
“As of yesterday, we are 460 pints down for October,” Ferzel said, adding, “We need to collect…and over-collect to make up that deficit.”
“If you fall out of routine, it takes a while to get back into it,” Ferzel explained, adding that it is difficult to get people back into their routine of donating regularly. The average blood donor is eligible to donate one pint of blood every 56 days.
Ferzel said one of the major problems with blood donations is that “blood has a shelf life.” Red blood cells can only remain on the shelf for 42 days and platelets, which are used to aid cancer patients, are only good for five days in storage. Ferzel explained the amount of time it takes to donate, process and distribute blood supplies narrows the window even further.
The Red Cross has been taking steps to increase the amount of volunteers to regain momentum. Ferzel said reaching out to possible donors through the media has been helping to “raise awareness and educate the public on donating regularly.”
Apart from working with different media and business partners, the Red Cross has provided extra incentives to help people find their way back to the donor drives. Boston Red Sox tickets and other promotional raffles have been advertised in an attempt to draw more people to the donation table.
“As a non-profit organization, we don’t have a bucket of money to bring in the masses,” Ferzel said, adding these prizes were provided by outside sponsors to help promote donation.
“The Red Cross has done a lot of public relations in the community,” said Ellen LaChance, transfusion service manager at Eastern Maine Medical Center, adding that she believes “they’ve done a really good job about how the need is ongoing. I think this is a little blip in the road.”
LaChance, who has worked for the Red Cross in the past, said the deficit has shown a significant shortage in donations of particular types of blood.
“When they have shortages, it puts pressure on us,” she said.
EMMC has “not had to take any drastic steps,” LaChance explained, even though the hospital is finding itself low on O negative and B negative red blood cell types.
There are three important goals Ferzel described in donating blood. The first is to keep the donors safe and healthy to donate a pint of blood; the second is to make sure the blood is safe for the patient; and the third is the safety of the patient, where it is extremely important to make sure the proper blood type is used in transfusions.
According to LaChance, there are fewer negative patients and therefore fewer negative donors, but the demand for these types of blood is there all the same.
Red blood cells contain an antigen on their surface that determines whether the type will be positive or negative. According to LaChance, 85 percent of people have a positive blood type. The letters — A, B or O — are determined by what type of sugar the blood contains.
Type O negative is known as the universal donor, as it can be used with all blood types. If there is an accident, LaChance said type O negative will be used until the patient’s blood type can be determined.
The deficit happens “typically in summer months and near holidays because of traveling and shopping,” LaChance said, adding that she also believes the shortage comes from how “people get busy with their lives.”
“It didn’t seem to be a problem for use during the summer [this year],” LaChance said. “We act as an overstock hospital. We have a little extra here, not only to serve our patients, but others in the geographic area.”
This overstocking helps small hospitals around Maine meet the needs of their patients. Recently, though, even this reserve has been feeling the crunch of the blood shortage.
“Our inventory levels are not optimum or critical currently — we’re fluctuating,” LaChance said.
Tom Fisher, lab director at Mount Desert Island Hospital and Health Centers in Bar Harbor, believes “big cities have more of an acute problem.”
“I think people are afraid to donate,” Fisher said. “[The deficit] really hasn’t affected us.”
If patients with emergencies are brought to the Mount Desert Island Hospital, a critical access center, they are stabilized and then “flown to Bangor,” said Fisher.
The next blood drive to be held at the University of Maine will be Nov. 17 and 18 at the Student Recreation and Fitness Center from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on both days. Students are encouraged to make an appointment by calling 1-800-REDCROSS or by visiting redcrossblood.org. Walk-ins will be accepted on both days of the event. Donors must be at least 17 years-old, hold a valid ID (MaineCards will be accepted) and eat and drink prior to donating.
“Students have always been wonderful and very committed donors,” LaChance said
