Central Florida blood centers urge donations amid national shortage

Judith Guerra is alive today because of donated blood.

When chemotherapy during an arduous battle with leukemia destroyed much of her platelets and hemoglobin in 2019, transfusions helped replace the proteins needed to carry oxygen throughout her body. Donor blood helped save her life twice earlier, when a genetic disorder led to heart surgeries in 2001 and 2010.

The 50-year-old resident of Winter Garden is eternally grateful for the donations that allowed her to be healthy enough to now spend time with her 8-month-old granddaughter.

“Pretty soon she’ll be walking, and I’ll be going crazy,” she said.

The need for donated blood has become more urgent amid a nationwide shortage driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Central Florida blood centers say they’ve turned to new strategies for finding donors to save the lives of people in need, like Guerra.

Initiatives like World Blood Donor Day, which was observed across the globe last Tuesday, serve as a welcome reminder of the impact of giving blood, the leaders of local donation organizations said.

The World Health Organization established the day almost 20 years ago “to raise global awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products for transfusion and of the critical contribution voluntary, unpaid blood donors make to national health systems.”

The current shortage shares a direct relationship with the COVID-19 pandemic, said Susan Forbes, spokesperson for Orlando-based OneBlood.

“It started off when the pandemic first showed up in Florida and everything was closing down, all the schools and businesses and colleges, and movie theaters,” she said. “Well, these are all the traditional places we would have blood drives, and nobody was there.”

As donation drives were canceled across the country, the coronavirus didn’t halt the need for blood.

“There’s still patients in the hospital who have cancer. There’s still premature babies. There’s still sickle cell patients. There’s still trauma patients,” Forbes said.

Once blood drives resumed, said first-time donors were on the rise as people wanted to help amid the uncertainty of COVID-19. But the surge of donations eventually tapered off as remote work and schooling became more commonplace.

More than two years since the pandemic began, OneBlood is still adapting.

“There’s been this seismic shift as to where the donors are, and that requires us to get creative on where we have blood drives,” Forbes said.

Company headquarters and universities may not see the foot traffic they used to, but other entities are stepping up. Forbes said her neighborhood’s homeowners’ association began hosting blood drives with OneBlood’s “Big Red Bus” two years ago.

Other blood donation centers have set up at unusual spots, too. LifeSouth, a community-based blood supplier headquartered in Gainesville, attends Dragon Con, a multimedia and pop culture convention in Atlanta, Ga., to collect donations from the costumed crowds.

LifeSouth is experiencing lower supplies than normal, spokesperson Brite Whitaker said, partly due to the national shortage, but also because blood donations falter during summer months when people are traveling, school is out and afternoon storms deter trips to donation centers.

“We really need people to come out and not think of coming out and donating when something tragic happens but coming out and donating because it’s a Tuesday and they want to help their community,” Whitaker said.

Routine donations of blood can mean the difference between life and death for people like Gloria Boisvert, a 51-year-old science teacher at Lake Highland Preparatory School who suffered a near-fatal loss of blood while undergoing heart surgery in 2008.

“I was a young mother with two little kids,” she said. “That would have been two kids without a mom, or a husband without a wife, a mother without a daughter.”

Boisvert said she hopes events like World Blood Donor Day encourage people to donate and remind them that the stakes are high.

“Highlighting it is paramount,” she said.

People interested in giving blood can search for their nearest donation center through donor portals available through both OneBlood and LifeSouth. Both organizations have sites in and around the Orlando area.

“In giving blood you’re giving a gift to another human being,” Boisvert said.

ahasebroock@orlandosentinel.com