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Help us save more lives

By Bridget Kenny, RN, BSN, Mosaic Medical Center – Maryville community outreach

You’re simply too busy or maybe you are thinking that others are pulling the weight.

What I can tell you is that all donors are needed and valuable. What if you were the parents whose teenager has been in a severe car accident, or the husband whose wife is bleeding severely after the emergent birth of their first child, or anyone who is suffering from severe anemia because of their cancer treatments? These are only a few that thank you for taking the time to save a life or improve someone’s quality of life.

Mosaic Medical Center – Maryville would like to provide you with education to help make the decision to become a life-saving hero. We have been in close contact with the regional Community Blood Center (CBC) representatives to try to combat the severe shortage we are experiencing in our region. In an effort to ensure appropriate amounts of blood for Northwest Missouri and Northeast Kansas, which includes many of the major medical centers in the Kansas City area, the blood center prefers to hold a seven-day supply of all blood types. Currently, there is a four- to five-day supply of A and B blood types and only a three-day supply of the O blood types.

Why is the blood supply so low? There are probably multiple reasons, but when the pandemic began and we were encouraged to social distance, many were unable to make it out to the blood drives. Some individuals were working from home or did not have anyone to stay with their children. Others were overly stressed at work or even just in life and did not see time to make it out to donate.

I would venture to guess that each of you has someone close to you whose life has been saved with a few units of blood. What if that blood were not available? Around the holidays, the region’s blood supply dipped to barely one extra day of blood on the shelf. Please help us to rally our community members to replenish the blood supply and help save lives by donating blood. Click savealifenow.org or call 1.888.647.4040 to register for one of the upcoming community drives.

A person is eligible to donate a unit of blood every eight weeks and a double unit every 16 weeks. Many of the rules about donating have changed over the course of the last several months and years. If you have questions about your eligibility, please call 1.800.688.0900.