Canadian Blood Services celebrates National Donor Week as summer appointments sit vacant

MAMA’s Pizza Express in Moncton is helping celebrate blood donors and encourage new ones during National Blood Donor week for Canadian Blood Services.   

As blood donors roll up their sleeves in Moncton this week, they’re met with a free slice of pizza from MAMA’s Pizza Express on Mountain Road.

It’s all part of National Blood Donor week, which hopes to not only thank regular donors, but also encourage more people to book appointments.

“It’s a local man named Nabeel Elias, who advised that when he moved to Canada from Syria seven years ago he had a lot of help from the community,” said Brandy Peters, the Community Development Manager for Moncton and Eastern New Brunswick.

“Now he just wants to show support and give back to the community that was there for him.”

However, as Canadian Blood Services celebrates its donors, there are concerns for the months ahead with many appointments currently vacant over the summer.

“Between now and the end of summer we have over 2000 open appointments that we’re looking to fill in Moncton and every week we have over 240 appointment slots to fill,” said Peters.

She adds that across Canada the number is much higher with 150,000 appointments that need to be filled before September.

“There’s over 17.5 million eligible donors in Canada, but now there’s less than 2 per cent who donate blood, so it’s a small group of regular donors who are meeting the needs of the entire country and we know this is unsustainable,” said Peters.

Officials say that ideally there is always 5-8 days of each blood type on hand within the national organization, but as of Thursday afternoon there is only a 2 day supply of O- blood.

“Donor behaviour changed a lot during the pandemic and fewer people are donating regularly now, so attendance is legging at a lot of our donor centres,” said Peters.

She says that men can donate every 56 days and woman every 84 days.

Peters says all types of donors are needed and right now they are hoping bring in more diversity.

“We are looking to build a more diverse donor base to help meet complex or underserved patient needs so blood from donors of the same or similar ethnic background as a recipient is less likely to cause complications,” she said.

“So achieving greater diversity in the blood is particularly important for patients receiving regular transfusing therapy so that includes sickle cell disease, cancer, thalassemia or bleeding disorders.”

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