Donor dropouts and limits on how many people are allowed to occupy a building or facility amid the crisis are just two of the reasons for these forced cancellations. These factors have raised tremendous concerns among experts regarding the blood stocks for future surgical operations, cancer and blood disease patients. Patients with chronic haematological diseases are often in need of regular blood transfusions, specifically red blood cells, platelets and sometimes plasma.

The most significant risk to blood stocks posed by COVID-19 is a lack of availability due to this decrease in donations. The situation becomes worse as blood products have a strict use-by date. It would not be wise to wait until the shelves of the blood banks are empty. Fast and effective action is needed immediately.

Healthy volunteers are urgently requested to donate blood NOW and throughout the next few months, for the sake of patients dependent on blood transfusions due to surgery or blood diseases.

What can you do?

Healthy individuals should schedule an appointment to donate blood during the Corona pandemic to ensure that sufficient supplies are available.

Attending a blood donation drive is allowed as an essential event, even if the country is under lock-down.

Don’t be put off if the next slot is not available till April, June or July. Donors will be required for many months to come. Book it please.

Imagine highly anaemic, weak and exhausted patients going to a hospital to receive a blood transfusion – in order to stay alive. But – being turned away because there is no blood left.

It is as dramatic as it sounds, those patients will potentially die of multiple organ failure within days or a  few weeks.

Two statements for all Corona-affected countries, regions and hospitals:

“Right now, the Red Cross is distributing blood donations faster than they are coming in,” Paul Sullivan, Senior Vice-President of the American Red Cross, told ABC News on March,17th.

Dr. Chris Lough, Vice-President of Medical Services for LifeSouth in the U.S., said, “If we continue to see blood drives cancel, we are going to reach a level of inventory of which we haven’t seen in the past.”

MDS patients – please ask your healthy relatives and friends to become or remain a volunteer donor. Please spread the word about the urgent need to help stop the threat of low blood stocks worldwide

As a person affected by the blood cancer MDS myself and in regular need of red blood cells, I am very grateful that many of my friends and my sons immediately went to donate blood, when I made them aware of the problem. If I had not told them – they would not have realised. Please talk about it around you.

Bergit Korschan-Kuhle, MDS-Alliance Steering Committee Member, Germany; MDS-Patient,
and – recipient of over 660 blood transfusions since 2008