They want your blood because they're at a critical low

January 21, 2010|by Jason Lamb

The blood bank has critically low supplies. (Jonathan Hartford/KTUU-DT)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — It usually isn't a good thing to see blood everywhere, but David Large's problem these days is that he doesn't see enough.

When you work at the blood bank, you're kind of hoping to see more of it.

The Blood Bank of Alaska is having a serious shortage. They're calling on donors, and until they get more, they're calling it a Code Red situation.

For the blood bank, it's a balancing act; keeping donations up with the amount they're sending to hospitals.

"We ended up going into a Code Red critical situation on five different blood types," Large says.

Code Red is blood bank code for less than one day's supply, so the blood bank hit the airwaves asking for help.

"We experienced a great tremendous response in the community last week, we saw over 650 donors, however, by the weekend we distributed nearly as much back out to hospitals to meet those requests," Large said.

The problem remains. The blood bank says it's been busy using up its supply, sending it around the state.

"We're still having surgeries, we're still having car accidents, there's still shootings, these are day-to-day requests that we get from hospitals," Large said.

The shortage comes after the blood bank was forced to shut down two collection sites in Wasilla and Soldotna because they weren't collecting enough.

"We're trying to be as efficient as possible. Blood banking is becoming a specialized industry, and in order to meet those specialized needs, we have to adapt our business model in order to meet those hospital requests," Large said.

That's why, he says, people like Katie Hickey are so important.

"The blood bank was low on blood so we came to fill ‘er up," Hickey said.

Hickey is a repeat donor who found her way back to the blood bank.

"A long time ago I got up to my gallon pin and didn't come for a while. Now I'm back," she said.

Large hopes others will be back too.

The blood bank says the last time it experienced a level this low was June 2009 after the Memorial Day weekend.

Contact Jason Lamb at jlamb@ktuu.com

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