Who should not donate blood?
*Men who have had sexual contact with other men since 1977
*Anyone who has ever received clotting factor concentrates
*Anyone with a positive test for HIV (AIDS virus)
*Men and women who have engaged in sex for money or drugs since 1977
*Anyone who has had hepatitis since his or her eleventh birthday
*Anyone who has had babesiosis or Chagas disease
*Anyone who has taken Tegison for psoriasis
*Anyone who has risk factors for Crueutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) or who has an immediate family member with CJD
*Anyone who has risk factors for vCJD
*Anyone who spent three months or more in the United Kingdom from 1980 through 1996
*Anyone who has ever used intravenous drugs (illegal IV drugs)
Facts about Blood
- An adult body contains 10-12 pints of blood
- It takes about 6-10 minutes to donate a pint of blood and 24 hours for your body to replace the blood fluid volume. The red cells may take up to two months for full restoration
- One unit of blood can be separated into components and used to treat up to three patients.
Whole blood has a shelf-life of 35 days. Red blood cells last 42 days, platelets only five days and plasma up to one year. - The most common blood type is O positive (38% of the population). The rarest blood is AB negative (<1%).
- An average healthy person will be eligible to give blood more than 330 times in his or her lifetime.
- Less than 5% of the general population donates blood and yet the majority of people will have at least one family member who will require at least one blood transfusion in their lifetime.
Who needs blood?
The need for blood is great — on any given day, an average of 39,000 units of red blood cells are needed. Blood transfusions often are needed for trauma victims — due to accidents and burns — heart surgery, organ transplants, and patients receiving treatment for leukemia, cancer or other diseases, such as sickle cell disease and thalassemia. In 2004, nearly 29 million units of blood components were transfused. And with an aging population and advances in medical treatments and procedures requiring blood transfusions, the demand for blood continues to increase.
Why Donate Blood?
A blood donation truly is a “gift of life” that a healthy individual can give to others in their community who are sick or injured. In one hour’s time, a person can donate one unit of blood that can be separated into four individual components that could help save multiple lives.
From one unit of blood, red blood cells can be extracted for use in trauma or surgical patients. Plasma, the liquid part of blood, is administered to patients with clotting problems. The third component of blood, platelets, clot the blood when cuts or other open wounds occur, and are often used in cancer and transplant patients. Cryoprecipitated anti-hemophilic factor (AHF) is also used for clotting factors.
In a recent study supported by the National Blood Foundation (TRANSFUSION 2002;42:122S), more than 5,000 individuals who were current blood donors at the time or who had given blood in the past were asked why they donate blood. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents said that they give blood to help others. Respondents also said that giving blood makes them feel good about themselves; supports their local communities and hospitals; supports their community culture; and “pays back” society for the times when they or their families have needed blood transfusions in the past.
What is Blood Pressure?
When your heart beats, it pumps blood round your body to give it the energy and oxygen it needs. As the blood moves it pushes against the sides of the blood vessels. The strength of this pushing is your blood pressure. If your blood pressure is too high, it puts extra strain on your arteries (and your heart) and this may lead to heart attacks and strokes.
But having high blood pressure (hypertension) is not usually something that you feel or notice. The only way to know what your blood pressure is, is to have it measured.
Blood pressure is measured in ‘millimetres of mercury’ (mmHg). When your blood pressure is measured it will be written as two numbers. For example, if your reading is 120/80mmHg, your blood pressure is ‘120 over 80’.
Blood Testing and Safety
Most Blood processing facilities perform 11 or 12 basic tests on every unit of donated Blood. Nine of these are for infectious diseases. These tests include screenings for: hepatitis (a liver infection); HIV (the virus that causes AIDS); HTLV-I (a virus associated with a rare form of leukemia); HTLV-II; and syphilis. Other tests are needed, but, are cost prohibitive and therefore not performed. The World Health Organization suggests only nine basic Blood tests.
Approximately 95% of Blood samples taken are tested within 24 hours of arrival at the Blood testing laboratory.
In the United States, for some Blood centers, if testing indicates that a unit of Blood may pose a threat to a patient, that Blood is destroyed. The donor is then entered into the Donor Deferral Register, a national computerized database of more than 250,000 known individuals who are deferred from donating Blood. This system assumes honest donors when selling or donating their Blood, or Blood products. At some point all Blood centers must subscribe to this service
Every day more is learned about Blood chemistry and the Blood supply. The Blood supply, therefore, is getting safer as more is known about the makeup of Blood and Blood diseases. Looking at the big picture, little is known to date
Blood Around The World
17% of the global population in developed countries benefits from approximately 60% of the 75 million units of Blood donated each year in the world.
The World Health Organization (WHO) requires only nine basic Blood safety tests. Many countries require eleven or twelve or more.
83% of the global population, living in developing countries, has access to only 40% of the Blood supply, and this Blood is collected in 60% of cases from paid or replacement donors rather than from voluntary non-remunerated low-risk Blood donors. Moreover it is not tested for transfusion-transmissible infection in more than 43% of cases. Avoiding the transmission of infection by Blood and Blood product is the other major safety issue, and the bigger issue in developed countries. It is conservatively estimated that approximately 5% of HIV infections world-wide are transmitted through the transfusion of contaminated Blood and Blood products
Blood Inforamation
* In general there is no substitute for human Blood.
* Blood makes up about 7% of your body's weight.
* An average adult has about 14 to 18 pints of Blood.
* One standard unit or pint of Blood equals about two cups.
* Blood carries oxygen and nutrients to all of the body.
* Blood carries carbon dioxide and other waste products back to the lungs, kidneys and liver for disposal.
* Blood fights against infection and helps heal wounds.
* One unit of donated whole Blood is separated into components before use (red Blood cells, white Blood cells, plasma, platelets, etc.)
* There are four main Blood types: A, B, AB and O.
* Each Blood type is either Rh positive or negative.
The three main types of cells making up our Blood are the White Blood cells, Red Blood cells and Platelets:
1.White Blood cells:White Blood Cells (WBCs) are the largest of the three types of cells and are responsible for fighting infections or germs. White Blood cells have a rather short life cycle, living from a few days to a few weeks. One drop of Blood can contain from 7,000 to 25,000 white Blood cells. If an invading infection fights back and persists, that number will significantly increase.
There are five types of White Blood Cells (WBCs):
basophil - acts on smooth muscle and Blood cell walls;
eosiniphil - acts against infestations of parasitic larvae;
lymphocyte - recognizes surface markers on cells and targets them for destruction if foreign to the body;
monocyte - formed bone marrow, monocytes migrate into connective tissue and become macrophages; and,
neutrophil - the first line of defense, 100 billion mature neutrophils are released into the body everyday.
2.Red Blood cells:Red Blood Cells (RBCs) make up approximately 40% of Blood volume, carry oxygen to the cells of your body and return to the lungs to excrete carbon dioxide
There are about one billion red Blood cells in a few drops of whole Blood.
Red Blood cells live about 120 days in our bodies.
Red Blood cells can be stored under normal conditions for up to 42 days.
Frozen red Blood cells can be stored for ten years, and more.
3.Platelets:Platelets, the smallest of the Blood cells; make up 5% to 7% of total Blood volume. Platelets form a 'mesh' net to form clots in the Blood to help stop bleeding.
Platelets must be used within five days.
Platelets are small Blood cells that assist in the process of Blood clotting helping those with leukemia and other cancers, controlling bleeding.
Plasma:It is the fourth major component of Blood, is a sticky, pale yellow fluid mixture of water, protein and salts. It is 95% water. The other 5% is made up of nutrients, proteins and hormones.
Blood Plasma constitutes 55% of the volume of human Blood.
Plasma helps maintain Blood pressure, carries Blood cells, nutrients, enzymes and hormones, and supplies critical proteins for Blood clotting and immunity.
Plasma can be collected from a normal healthy donor twice weekly (max. every 48 hours) and is the most frequently donor paid-for component of Blood. Plasma is often referred to as "the college students beer money."
Type AB plasma has been considered as the universal Blood plasma type, and therefore AB plasma is given to patients with any Blood type.
Frozen Plasma can be stored for up to one year.
Human Blood; red Blood cells, white Blood cells, plasma and platelets are made naturally by the body in the bone marrow.
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