‘It’s not looking great’: PNW blood donor org urges more donations as supply slips

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Bloodworks Northwest is urging community members to donate blood as the region’s supply nears emergency-level lows.

Health officials say blood donations decrease during summer as people are out enjoying activities and festivals.

“People aren’t coming out to donate blood because it’s not on their minds and during summer, that’s actually when we see an increase in accidents and traumas that need more blood transfusions,” Lauren Reagan of Bloodworks Northwest said.

The need for more blood donors was exemplified this week in Portland, Reagan said, as Bloodworks Northwest needed to place an emergency shipment order for transfusions and an officer-involved shooting in Tualatin.

“Even on Tuesday, we had to do an emergency blood shipment of O positive from our facility in Renton down to Portland area hospitals because they had three mass transfusion events – which, one in a day is very unlikely, but we had three and two of them are simultaneously happening so, we had to do emergency shipment and that was prior to officer shooting,” Reagan explained.

Bloodworks Northwest has several locations around the Pacific Northwest and is adding a Beaverton location to increase accessibility for donors.

“You never know if they’re going to need one unit or if they’re going to need up to 100. So, we want to make sure our hospital partners have what they need to help save lives,” Reagan said.

“As of right now, we are starting to slip into emergency levels on certain blood types; O negative being your universal, O positive, which is the most common type here in the Pacific Northwest. As we’re forecasting heading into August, it’s not looking great. We have over 2,000 open appointments just at the end of this month,” Reagan said.

“We need about 1,000 donors every single day throughout the Pacific Northwest to keep a stable blood supply. Right now, we need even more to come out, take an hour out of their day, have some snacks with our teams and just donate blood to help save a life.”