Last month, the American Red Cross declared its second-ever national blood supply shortage when summer blood donations hit a four-year low due to various factors, from extreme heat to a diminished pool of active donors that has persisted since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Summer is always a challenging time for maintaining adequate blood supplies, said Armando Romero, associate director of Transfusion Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, noting that it’s “something we anticipate every single year” in the healthcare sector.
But this year it has reached a crisis level. Supplies of type O blood (both O positive and O negative) are particularly low, dropping to less than a single day’s worth. Type O is the blood type most frequently needed and transfused in hospital emergency rooms.
“The summer season is traditionally the time when donations dip because school is out, so we don’t have access to high school blood drives, which contribute hundreds of units of blood in a single day,” explained Romero. “We lose access to all of those students and donations.”
In California, teenagers can donate blood at 17 years of age and older without permission, or at 16 if they have a consent form signed by a parent or guardian. Historically, high school students have accounted for at least 10% of overall blood collection nationwide, with high schoolers and college students combined providing 20% to 25% of the total blood supply in the U.S., according to data from the American Red Cross.
But due to virtual schooling and other restrictions during the pandemic, there was a massive drop in donations across the board, especially among students, said Romero. Though donations rebounded somewhat, he said the extended disruption to traditional on-site blood drives at schools caused them to lose “a whole crop of young donors who were never exposed to that donation process for a couple of years” – especially high school students, said Romero.
“Those are the years when many young people kind of get introduced to the idea of donating blood,” he added. “For a period of about three years, we kind of skipped a whole generation of youth that didn’t get familiar with blood donations [and] never developed that sense of altruism.”
These factors, combined with typical summer challenges – including extreme heat, seasonal travel patterns and the usual summer surge in trauma cases that require blood transfusions – have contributed to the current national blood shortage.
“Summer is a time when people are traveling, and they’re usually not working and not available to donate blood,” said Romero. “When we go to a company to collect blood during the summer, [there are] often only about half the normal number of employees who are available to donate.”
Non-seasonal barriers to blood donations that persist year-round include common fears and misconceptions, such as phobias about needles; concern about how much blood is taken (about 450 milliliters, or the size of a small water bottle); thinking that having tattoos or being on common medications disqualifies them from giving blood (neither is true); or cultural myths.
“Even in my culture, the Hispanic culture, you often hear, ‘Well, I don’t want to donate blood, because I hear you gain weight if you do,’” said Romero. “That’s a common myth, but there’s no science behind that.”
The bottom line, he emphasized, is that donating blood makes a tangible, positive difference in people’s lives every single day.
“We see the need for blood day in and day out, and it’s not just for big emergencies – it’s for planned knee or shoulder surgeries, cancer treatments [and other] everyday procedures that depend on having blood on the shelf,” said Romero. “Without enough donations, we risk postponing or delaying critical care.
“When you donate blood,” he continued, “within just a few days that donation is going into another human being. It’s one of the most direct ways to help your neighbors. That’s why we’re really calling on the public right now to roll up their sleeves and help save lives.”
For information about how to donate blood via Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, go to: www.donatebloodcedars.org.
To donate blood via the American Red Cross, go to: www.redcrossblood.org.