Getting blood from a zone

PAULA HULBURT

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A blood donation service in Blenheim has been ruled out by the New Zealand Blood Service. The organisation currently has no plans to build a permanent donor centre in the Marlborough region.

And while service bosses have revealed a mobile service could become a reality in the future, time constraints make it a no-go for now.

A spokesperson from NZBS says Blenheim has been considered for a donor centre but logistics and the smaller population make it too tricky.

“That said, we would certainly love to hold a mobile blood drive in Blenheim and have explored several options to see if we can make this happen.

“Unfortunately, it is currently unfeasible as there is no suitable direct flight from Blenheim to Christchurch.

“The lack of a suitable direct flight between Blenheim and Christchurch poses a potential risk for us not being able to get collected blood to processing in time.”

At present, blood donors at the top of the South Island are serviced by a mobile blood drive in Nelson that is held twice a year.

NZBS is the sole provider of all blood and blood products to hospitals around New Zealand, including Wairau Hospital.

The organisation celebrates 25 years this month, helping to save or improve 540,000 lives.

More than 610,000 people have donated during the service’s lifetime, with the current number of active donors sitting at around 117,000 people.

While New Zealand needs more than 5,000 donations every week to meet demand, Blenheim’s location means transporting donations isn’t possible.

“Donated blood needs to be pro- cessed within 12 hours of the first needle being removed.

“We have investigated the option of using one of the smaller airline providers (nine to 12-seater planes) that fly between Blenheim and Christchurch.

“However, these smaller flights do not move freight routinely and would require seats to be removed, making this a non-viable option to transport the blood.”

Transporting blood to Nelson has also been ruled out as there is some risk over flights heading to Christchurch being hit by delays.

“As a result, this would not give our team enough time to collect their daily target for this region, which would be 200 donations across three days to make the blood drive viable,” the spokesperson says.

The Wellington processing centre is already at capacity.

“NZBS wants to ensure as many eligible people as possible have access to donating blood because we have big collection targets to meet.

“We constantly review our mobile blood drive destinations, and hope there will be opportunities in future for people who reside in areas that we don’t currently visit to give blood closer to home.

“We appreciate there are people in Blenheim who are willing and able to donate.

“They would be welcome to give blood at any of our donor centres in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin if they’re ever visiting those cities or at another location where we’re hosting a mobile drive.

Mobile locations and dates can be found easily by downloading the NZ Blood Service Donor App or by visiting https://www. nzblood.co.nz/booking