Summer vacation brings seasonal blood shortage

Rick Claypole of Rohnert Park believes that when you save a life you save the world - one person’s world, often populated by a community of family, close friends and acquaintances.

Claypole, a retired division chief for the U.S. Forest Service, spent many years protecting and managing the natural wonders of the Klamath National Forest in Siskiyou County. Sometimes he helped save lives as part of first response teams tending to crash and other accident victims.

On Monday, Claypole, 65, sat in a reclining chair at the local Blood Centers of the Pacific, connected to an apheresis machine that removed blood platelets from his body. Donations of whole blood, red cells, platelets and plasma are needed throughout the year, but moreso during seasonal shortages.

“Blood can’t be created. We are the creators,” he said, shortly after donating. “We have that life in our veins that can be passed on to others.”

The Bay Area and the rest of the country are currently experiencing a dangerously low supply of blood, they often do at this time of the year, according to Dr. Salima Shaikh, medical director of Blood Centers of the Pacific, a regional blood bank that provides blood products to 20 hospitals and 50,000 patients annually throughout Northern California.

Shaikh said the period around July 4 is when many families are on vacation and both individual and community-based donations slow down. Also, college and high school campuses, where donation drives are often conducted, are either closed down or nearly empty for the summer.

Twenty percent of blood donations during the year come from high school and college donations, said Corley, a spokesman for the local Blood Centers of the Pacific on Industrial Drive in west Santa Rosa. Hot temperatures can also depress donations, he said.

“The weather is an issue in the summer because we’re already on thin margins,” said Corley. “Hot days can make that worse with people not coming out for donations.”

Blood Centers of the Pacific is a subsidiary of Arizona-based Blood Systems, the second largest blood collection organization in the country. Serving 20 states, the system is 5,700 units short on its supply. Corley said a single trauma patient in a car accident can use anywhere from 10 to 15 units of blood.

Local use is a priority for each blood center, but during times of shortages blood is often sent to where it’s needed in the system, said Shaikh.

“We have blood centers throughout the country … It could go as far as New Jersey,” Shaikh said. “We focus on the local need, but we also help other blood centers throughout the system.”

Blood donors like Claypole are among a “special breed” of Americans, said Corley. Only one in 10 of those eligible to donate - about 38 percent of the U.S. population - will do so, he said. That’s less than 4 percent of Americans.

When you consider that only 6 percent of Americans have the universal O-negative type blood cells used for trauma patients and accident victims, the need for more donations during shortages becomes even more critical, Corley said.

Few have it, but “everybody who is in an emergency will get O-negative,” said Corley.

Corley said that in recent years large employers have downsized their workforces, making smaller community-based drives more imperative. Blood Centers of the Pacific has also in recent years conducted promotional events such as the one hosted by Stevens Creek Toyota, where donors are automatically registered to win a 2017 Toyota Prius.

Sebastopol Fire Chief Bill Braga said the many blood drives organized by his department are “another chapter of what we do for our community.” Firefighters and EMS personnel are usually the first responders to such things as automobile crashes and other life-threatening accidents. After a patient is delivered to an emergency department, he said, medical personnel could be using the blood products derived from one of the fire department’s six annual blood drives.

“We treat them, bandage them, get them out to a hospital,” he said. “Now they’re in surgery and the blood they need is coming from our firehouse … It kind of completes the cycle of saving a life.”

Claypole sees it that way. He said that of course it is considered a civic duty, but the real value is in the fact that you know your blood is saving someone’s life.

“To me it’s a way of helping people that you don’t know,” he said. “If you save a life, you save the world - that person’s world.”

The Blood Centers of the Pacific and Screamin’ Mimi’s in Sebastopol will hold a blood drive on Aug. 6. Dubbed a Pint for a Pint Blood Drive, blood donors will receive a coupon for a pint of Screamin’ Mimi’s ice cream.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.