Providing blood transfusions

Increasing blood donations

Context

There are four main blood types: A, B, AB and O. Donated blood can be separated into such components as red blood cells, platelets or plasma, which are transfused according to specific medical need. It can take just six units of blood to survive heart surgery, while a car crash victim may need 50. About 40,000 units of blood are used each day in the USA. Blood centers often run short of types O and B blood, but shortages of all types commonly occur during holidays and the summer because regular donors take vacation.

Implementation

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has had a well established Blood Programme for many years. The Blood Programme receives support on a voluntary basis by a number of National Societies involved in blood transfusion services. In 1993, numerous contacts and missions supported National Society blood transfusion and donor recruitment activities all over the world.

Claim

The blood supply has long relied on volunteer donation for a number of reasons, most notably safety. The argument is that paying donors creates an incentive to donate even if they know their blood is tainted by illness, disease, or unhealthy lifestyle, but that there is no such incentive for true volunteers.

Requiring people to donate blood is not unprecedented – in combat situations, healthy soldiers have been ordered to donate blood for their wounded compatriots. And in this era of ever more sensitive tests for disease, it seems far less likely that tainted blood could get through the screening processes in place. So why not turn blood donation into something closer to a civic duty, like voting, than treat it as an unexpected gift?