Musings: Roll up your sleeves to save lives this summer
During the summer, blood drives ebb when schools close and people are on vacation. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas
Summer brings a health challenge that you may find surprising. These months are a difficult time for collecting blood. Drives falter when schools close, people are not at their workplaces, and many are on vacation far from home. Blood banks often face emergency demand during the summer because of increased auto accidents and other trauma cases.
Nassau County hospitals and the wider Long Island region are currently facing a critically low blood supply, with the New York Blood Center having declared an ongoing blood emergency. The Red Cross blood supply fell about 25% in June. Regional NYC and LI supplies have plummeted to less than a two-day inventory, with type O blood — the most critical for emergencies — often at less than a one-day supply.
Making things worse, some people are afraid to accept donated blood due to irrational worries about getting COVID. They insist on directed donations from family or friends, which ties up human resources and winds up using blood that can actually carry more risk, since directed donors — often giving blood for the first time, sometimes under pressure to qualify — have shown higher rates of undetected risk factors than repeat volunteer donors.
Sadly, the number of Americans donating blood is falling. Most donors are older than 50, and donor age is trending upward while the number of younger donors increasingly declines. Last year, even though roughly 62% of the U.S. population was eligible to donate, only about 3% did. That means your life is in the hands of a tiny minority of Americans, and that things will be even more dangerous for all of us in the New York area as the summer rolls on.
Which brings us to prominent politicians, health fanatics, celebrities, and entrepreneurs who post and chatter endlessly about wellness. If they really cared about wellness, they would show themselves donating blood and encourage others to do so. If we all do, that will ensure a lot of wellness this summer.
— Arthur Caplan
The writer is professor emeritus at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
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