Thanks for posting about your 5th blood donation. It's part of this year's totals since it was already listed in the Honor Roll.
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MacRumors 2023 Blood Drive!
- Thread starter Doctor Q
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Thanks for posting about your 5th blood donation. It's part of this year's totals since it was already listed in the Honor Roll.
Naw, I sent you the dates of the previous four, that one wasn't included on the honour roll because I hadn't done it yet so should take me to five 👍
MacRumors Blood Drive: June 2023 through April 2024
Blood and platelet donors can continue to participate.
Record your donations on the Team MacRumors page. We'll tally your donations and count them for the MacRumors Blood Drive next May.
Blood and platelet donors can continue to participate.
Record your donations on the Team MacRumors page. We'll tally your donations and count them for the MacRumors Blood Drive next May.
- Go to the Team MacRumors page and click PLEDGE TO GIVE BLOOD. Bookmark the page for the future.
- Fill in your MacRumors username as your first name and @ macrumors as your last name.
- In the comments field, tell us what type of donation and how many units, e.g., 1 unit of whole blood, 2 units of platelets, etc.
- The email address and zip code fields don't matter. MacRumors won't use that information.
June 14 is World Blood Donor Day. It's an annual awareness-raising event.
The World Health Organization also wants to "thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood."
Who are the involuntary donors they are excluding?
The World Health Organization also wants to "thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood."
Who are the involuntary donors they are excluding?
I have a question for US docs / donors. Are blood donations in the states all voluntary and freely given? (I'm in the UK where it's all voluntary / unpaid.)
How does it work across the pond? Is it all the same - voluntary, a mix or does everyone get paid?
I'm genuinely interested (and honestly I don't want to start yet another healthcare debate). Is it all run independently by different hospitals or is there a central organisation (like here) that just runs it all and dishes it all out as needed to various concerns?
Donations in the U.S. are voluntary, as far as I know.
The Red Cross and other blood donation centers regularly offer small thank-you prizes to donors, in addition to juice and a snack, but sometimes they offer cash up front, like their current campaign:
Meanwhile, at least one company regularly offers non-trivial amounts of cash for plasma donations, and many people participate to supplement their income. Their parent company is a Japanese pharmaceutical with American and British roots, and they have plasma donation centers all over the U.S.
Payments like this increase the risk that someone will lie on their qualification questionnaire in order to donate when they shouldn't. But small non-cash thank-you gifts, like a sticker, a mug, or a T-shirt that promotes blood donation, can help encourage donations while avoiding the cash-incentive risk.
Thanks very much for the interesting response. That all makes sense and gives perspective in terms of the blood drives via the US Red Cross etc. Plasma must be a valuable commodity for private concerns I guess. Here (for platelets anyway) it's really just all the tea you can drink and biscuits you can eat while donating. (Plus you do get little pin badges sent to you once you completed set numbers of donations which is a nice little thing to do.)
And a late entry from me after a plasma donation this morning in Sydney, bring my donation total to 166
Big Changes for Donor Eligibilty in Canada
Canadian Blood Services (CBS) has loosened acceptance requirements for people that lived in France and the United Kingdom (U.K.) in the 1980s. Depending on how much time one lived there, the fear was that “Mad Cow” disease could be transferred to patients causing Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans. Starting Monday, 4 December 2023, patients that meet these new requirements can donate blood, plasma and platelets.
You may now be eligible to donate blood, plasma or platelets if you...
- spent a cumulative total of five years or more in France and/or Republic of Ireland between January 1, 1980, and December 31, 2001, or received a transfusion in these countries,
- spent a cumulative total of three months or more in the United Kingdom (UK) between January 1, 1980, and December 31, 1996, or received a transfusion in the UK.
Attachments
Do you know the current rules in the U.S.?
In May 2022, the Food and Drug Administration changed their guidance to no longer indefinitely defer blood donors for possible exposure to bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the U.K. from 1980 to 1996 and for time spent in France and Ireland from 1980 to 2001.
But I haven't been able to confirm the current rules.