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28th January 2025
12:45pm GMT
With blood supplies running critically low, people across Ireland are being urged to step up and donate.
Hospitals are experiencing unprecedented demand, and the situation is becoming increasingly urgent, according to officials.
Last year, hospitals requested more blood donations than they had in over a decade, and the "exceptionally high" demand isn’t slowing down.
Paul McKinney from the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) highlighted the severity of the situation when speaking with Newstalk, saying there’s currently less than three days’ supply left for certain blood types.
“To be honest, we are low across the board,” he said.
“O positive, which 48% of us are – we normally never have shortages in that – we are at four days in that group.”
The shortages are being caused by a range of factors, including the weather. “Obviously, Storm Éowyn and Herminia have really caused havoc with our clinics,” McKinney explained.
“The snow two weeks ago also caused huge problems - we had to cancel clinics.”
As well as this, many donors have been unable to attend due to illness, and attendance at clinics has dropped dramatically.
“Unfortunately, we had very high no-shows, and our clinics were operating significantly below full capacity, around 60% full,” he said.
The IBTS has even had to deal with power cuts at their facilities, making an already difficult situation worse. On top of this, hospital demand has remained high despite all these challenges.
McKinney stressed the importance of getting more people involved - especially younger donors.
“The average age of our donors is now 46, [and] we need desperately to get younger donors in. We desperately need young people to step forward and help us ensure that we have enough blood to keep the hospitals going.”
He also spoke of the importance of diversity among donors. “We need donors of all ethnicities and, in particular, those of African heritage.”
Even though January is behind us, McKinney suggested that giving blood would make a great late New Year’s resolution.
“This is going to be a very challenging week for us,” he said. “We have 150 clinics operating over the next four weeks [and] we need those clinics at full capacity. If you get a text from us, please make an appointment and please try and show up.”
Without enough donations, the consequences could be dire. “Otherwise, we are going to have to reduce our supply to the hospitals, which will have an impact on their services, unfortunately.”
The situation is so critical that hospitals may soon have to decide which operations can go ahead.
“We operate a traffic system with the hospitals - we're currently at a pre-amber warning to the hospitals, which is to tell them that our stocks are very low,” McKinney said.
“If, however, we go to an Amber Alert, which we're very close to, that means that we would ask the hospitals to implement their own emergency blood management groups, and they would then, unfortunately, have to decide what operations could go ahead.
“Obviously, urgent operations do, but certainly elective surgeries would come under pressure.”
McKinney warned that Ireland has never reached the most critical level, a red alert. “Going to a red, which is under two days, would mean that only emergency situations would have to be dealt with.”
He couldn’t stress enough how serious the situation is: “Bloods are at a very critical stage,” he said. Now is the time to donate if you can - it could genuinely save a life.
