Every two seconds, someone needs blood, that’s according to Our Blood Institute.
Once blood is donated, it’s then distributed to hospitals like Comanche County Memorial Hospital. Prakriti Adhikari, the Blood Bank Supervisor at CCMH, said once it arrives, they do testing on the blood and crossmatch testing to make sure that it’s safe for the patient to receive the transfusion.
“And there are a lot of checks in place that we have in our system and personal checks at the bedside so that the patient can have it safely,” she said.”
Adhikari said it’s important to have the blood at the hospital so it’s available when it’s needed.
“So we use the blood not just for trauma or surgery,” she said, “but we use it for our neonatal population. If they need blood, we give blood to them, and every month we have a baby that’s getting a blood transfusion.”
Adhikari said while they’ve always experienced seasonal blood shortages because of weather or the holidays, they’ve noticed changes over the past few years.
“Due to the pandemic, it is getting harder to recover, and sometimes we have to call around to have those products available for our patients, and sometimes it’s ok,” Adhikari said. “We are still managing here.”
Because of that, she said they had to cut down their supply at the hospital. She encourages people to donate blood if they can because you never know when an emergency might happen.
“We need to make sure that we have enough blood on our shelf to treat our patients immediately because it could be a trauma patient that could need a lot of blood, so we need to have it prepared and given to the patient,” she said.
Donating blood is easy, safe and can save up to three lives.
“It’s not a scary thing to do,” Adhikari said. “Blood donation is an act of kindness that you can show to others in need. We really appreciate whoever goes out there and donates.”
If you’d like to donate, you can go to Our Blood Institute in Lawton. If you’ve never donated before, why not give for the first time this month which is National Blood Donor Month.
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