Local blood supply diminishing

In her 31 years of working at Blood Assurance, Mona Dilbeck can't remember the local blood supply ever being this flat.

"We used to see a bad day or two and then things would get back to normal," said Ms. Dilbeck, technical lab director. "But this has been a day-after-day-after-day struggle."

Blood Assurance, the nonprofit blood collection agency that serves 47 counties in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina, recently issued a critical appeal asking for more community donations.

After seeing a hit in the local blood supply over the summer, the organization is gearing up for the typically slower flu and holiday seasons, public relations representative Lacey Wilson said.

Critical appeals usually are issued about once each year, when the blood supply dips, she said, but six have been issued so far in 2009. By the end of October, donations were down almost 5,000 units for the year compared to 2008, she said.

The faltering economy could explain the drop in donations, officials said. Collection centers that pay for blood plasma have drawn away frequent Blood Assurance donors, Ms. Dilbeck said.

Blood Assurance also collects 13 percent of its donations from high school and college campuses, where swine flu-related absences have put a dent in donations, Ms. Wilson said.

Dr. Liz Culler, Blood Assurance's medical director, said blood usage in area hospitals has remained steady in recent years, causing Blood Assurance to struggle to keep up with demand. She said the low supply has caused late and smaller deliveries of blood to area hospitals.

If the supply were to dip to dangerously low levels, hospitals could be forced to start rationing the use of donated blood, Dr. Culler said. Some surgeries, such as elective procedures, would have to be canceled or postponed to ensure that blood is available for the most critical emergencies, she said.

"That would be just a worst-case scenario," Dr. Culler said.

In the past, Blood Assurance relied on large blood drives at corporations and manufacturing plants, but recent layoffs have made many of those drives less fruitful than before, Ms. Wilson said.

Now the organization brings bloodmobiles to area retailers and fast-food restaurants, trying to make up for the drop in donations, Ms. Wilson said.

"We've got to have our buses out pretty much every day in order to get the blood units we need," she said.

Though Blood Assurance has been able to meet local demand through the shortage, Ms. Dilbeck said she didn't know how much the organization could stand if the shortage got deeper.

"You have to wonder," she said. "If there was a pandemic or a national disaster that used a lot of blood, then there's going to be a problem."

H1N1 IMPACT

With more and more people becoming sick from the H1N1 virus, officials are asking for all healthy individuals to consider giving blood.

"We do anticipate the flu season will hit us hard," Ms. Wilson said. "We're expecting it to be even worse next year."

The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees blood collection agencies, released collection guidelines this month in light of the H1N1 flu pandemic.

The new guidelines haven't affected Blood Assurance's operation, said Dr. Culler.

"We were really already doing all those things," she said. "We always try to practice good hygiene."

Ms. Wilson said there never has been a documented case of transferring the flu through blood transfusions. And donors should feel safe because all materials are single use and disposed of after every donation, she said.

"The concern isn't that it could be transmitted from the donor to the patient," she said. "The concern is that it could be spread at collection sites."

Blood Assurance conducts medical screenings of all donors and tests blood for communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS or hepatitis, Dr. Culler said. Officials ask donors who feel sick shortly after a donation to call the collection center so the blood can be discarded.