'The storms caused havoc': Appeal to younger people to donate blood, with supplies 'running critically low'

The Irish Blood Transfusion Service has called on younger people and migrants to consider donating blood. Picture James Horan/RollingNews.ie

Young blood donors are urgently needed, with clinics cancelled or running at 60% capacity due to the storms and widespread illness, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service has said.

This January has been “particularly tough” according to Paul McKinney, director of donor services and logistics.

Supplies for some blood types are down to just three days’ worth instead of seven days. More than 12,000 donations from people of all ages are needed in the next month to top-up supply to safer levels.

“The storms have really caused havoc to our services through January. There is a lot of sickness out there amongst the donor population, and demand from the hospitals is extremely high,” he said.

“We’ve obviously had to cancel clinics, change the times. I have to say our donors are fantastic but a lot of our clinics are only operating at 60 or 70% capacity.” 

Clinics have been reporting “very high” no-show rates for the last three weeks, he added.

In addition, all clinics were cancelled on Friday due to Storm Éowyn, with low numbers attending Thursday evening clinics.

The service is now “under quite a bit of pressure”, he said.

Cancer patients take up about 70% of donated blood usually, so demand remains steady from hospitals, in addition to blood needed for emergencies.

“Last year, we issued in excess of 128,000 donations, and that is the highest in 10 years for us,” Mr McKinney said.

“This month has certainly started extremely busy — one of the weeks was the third highest week of issues in 10 years. So you can see the hospitals have been extremely busy.” 

Weekend clinics went ahead but again under challenging weather conditions.

“Those clinics were good but they weren’t brilliant,” he said.

“A lot of donors were struggling with no power in their own houses. We have no power in some of our depots.” 

The combined effect of these factors has left the service “running critically low in blood stocks”, they warned.

Blood can only be kept for 35 days, and platelets for just five days. Some patients are so vulnerable they can only accept blood no more than 10 days old.

“We are asking people who might never have given blood before, or it’s been a while, to make it their goal to give blood, and the priceless gift of life, to those in our communities and hospitals who need it,” Mr McKinney said.

Every year, they try to reach 15,000 new donors, but last year only had 11,500 new donors sign up.

“We need younger donors to replenish the donor pool because the average age of our donor pool is on the increase. It’s around 46 now and getting older,” he said.

He also called for migrants to come forward and find out if they could be donors.

Almost 150 clinics take place in the next month, further information on the IBTS website.