Donor campaign aims to halt blood supply crisis
The Blood Transfusion Service was today launching a high profile campaign to attract more donors after it emerged that the service would be unable to cope with a major emergency.
The service said supplies of some blood types were 25% below minimum levels and more donors were desperately needed.
Health Minister Gay Mitchell was launching Blood Awareness Week at St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, in a bid to increase the 100,000 people who give blood to treat nearly four million patients each year.
Blood stocks often run short during summer months as donors are on holiday.
But supplies have been further hit this year after around 12,000 people were banned amid fears of transmitting variant CJD - the human form of mad cow disease.
A service spokeswoman added that more donors were excluded as they had caught colds and other minor illnesses over the summer months.
‘‘At the moment there are not enough supplies to cope with a major incident. We are launching a campaign today so we can guarantee supplies,’’ she said.
One of the main concerns was that stocks of O-negative blood were 25% below minimum targets.
O-negative is vital as it can be used to treat patients with any blood type.
Ireland has always had a low number of blood donors compared to many other countries in Europe, the spokeswoman said.
In February this year, hospitals were told that the blood bank could not guarantee stocks would last longer than a week. Some operations had to be postponed.
