The New Zealand Blood Service needs 40,000 more blood donors to meet demand, but local blood donors cannot get appointments to donate.
Motueka resident Mary Russell has been a willing donor for more than 30 years but could not get an appointment for the upcoming mobile blood drive in Nelson this July.
The mobile unit visits Nelson twice a year and has its next three-day visit between 18 - 20 July, but appointments filled up long ago.
Mary, who has made 61 blood donations since 1988, says it is frustrating when the blood service is calling for more blood and people want to donate, but don’t have the opportunity to do so.
She remembers when the blood service took mobile units around the region and anyone could turn up to give blood.
She says it is wrong that many people in provincial towns no longer have the option to donate.
“It seems bizarre when there are a lot of New Zealanders ready and willing to donate blood, but don’t have a unit where they can do so.
“One thing I feel quite strongly about is that young people are growing up without that culture of donating blood. Back in the day they used to visit local secondary schools and that was putting it in front of those kids, so they knew about it. Now it might never cross their minds to donate.”
During National Blood Donor Week in June, the blood service said it had 117,000 donors who helped save the lives of 30,000 people every year. However, that donor registry had only grown by 9,000 in the past five years and it needed 40,000 more donors to meet rising demand for blood plasma.
A New Zealand Blood Service spokesperson said two three-day mobile blood drives are held in Nelson each year where it aims to collect 200 donations on each visit.
A mobile team travels from Christchurch for the blood drive and each day the collected blood is flown to its processing laboratory in Christchurch.
Donated blood needs to be processed within 12 hours of the needle being removed. After testing for viruses, each donation is separated into red blood cells, plasma and platelets.
The Christchurch site then supplies and replenishes the blood bank in Nelson with blood products.
Until 2013, a Nelson-based team operated mobile drives in smaller towns around the region.
The service closed the donor centre in Nelson in 2013 due to a decline in demand for red blood cells at the time.
After that, a mobile blood service continued to operate out of Christchurch in both Nelson and Richmond until 2018, when the decision was made to discontinue the Richmond mobile in favour of adding an extra day to the Nelson collection.
The spokesperson says red cells for transfusion will continue to be sourced within New Zealand due to the short shelf life and storage options.
Treatments from plasma have longer shelf life which enables them to be sourced internationally and the service already sources about 15 per cent from overseas to meet demand.
“New Zealand is lucky that we are relatively self-sufficient for plasma, but we need 40,000 new donors in the next 12 months to maintain this self-sufficiency,” they say.
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To meet New Zealand’s increasing demand, the service is investing more into its fixed donor centres but has no plans to expand Nelson’s collection yet.
“New Zealand Blood Service is certainly fortunate to have a passionate donor community in Nelson which always turns out in force whenever we are in town. We regularly look at where next to boost collections. Nelson’s enthusiasm won’t be forgotten.”
