Every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs blood. However, the number of blood donors in a year in the U.S. is 6.8 million people. Now, 6.8 million donors may seem like a lot, but an estimated 38 percent of the U.S. population is eligible to donate at any given time, yet only 10 percent of this eligible population actually do each year. Meanwhile, the two most common reasons given by people who don’t give blood are they “never thought about it” and “I don’t like needles.” Given all the recent mass shootings, I’ve been thinking more about this and realized donating blood is more crucial than ever in our tumultuous world, where these shootings are becoming more common and the need for blood is critical to saving lives in mass emergencies like the ones we have recently experienced.
The donation process has 4 parts – registration, medical history and mini-physical, donation, and refreshments. The largest amount of your time will be spent registering if you are a first-time donor and assuring your blood is safe to donate. The actual donating of the blood will take about 15 minutes and immediately after you will hydrate and have some snacks. The whole process takes about an hour and 15 minutes, but that time will save at least 3 lives.
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One pint of blood and several small test tubes make up your blood donation, and these components can potentially go to multiple patients. The blood is stored in iced coolers until it gets to a blood center [American Red Cross, NY Blood Center, etc.] where it is scanned into a computer database and spun in a centrifuge to separate the transfusable components like plasma, red cells, and platelets. The test tubes of blood are sent to testing laboratories to confirm your blood type and scan for potential infectious diseases and these results are transferred electronically into the system so your blood can be transferred to hospital at any time.
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Regularly donating blood also has direct health benefits for you in the long run. You can improve your cardiovascular health, reduce your chances of having a heart attack, cancer, a stroke, and it also enhances the production of your blood cells. With benefits like these and the vital role you play in potentially saving lives, I suggest readers to consider giving the gift of blood to those who need it because it is more necessary than ever.
Source: American Red Cross [redcrossblood.org]
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