SANBS needs to maintain five days’ stock of blood to ensure an uninterrupted supply to hospitals.
“Unfortunately, blood collections over the past seven days has been consistently below target and the demand for blood has been consistently higher than predicted, resulting in the current days cover for Group O being at 2.2 days,” says Marion Vermeulen, acting chief operations officer of the national SANBS in a letter to hospital managers countrywide.
“We anticipate that the blood stocks will remain under pressure as we are unable to collect blood from many schools, universities and corporates due to their Covid restrictions. We have put several interventions in place, including regional and national appeals for blood and we anticipate that we will return to more manageable stock levels during the next couple of weeks,” she said.
Also read: Blood is urgently needed
“We appeal to all clinicians to make use of the SANBS type and screen facilities (contact your local Blood Bank for more information on this) if blood may ultimately not be required. This will result in more Group O blood being available in the Blood Bank for more urgent cases.” She said that the Blood Bank staff will also be contacting the clinicians to inform them where there may be potential delays in fulfilling blood orders. Cutbacks will be enforced until the situation changes.
“We are also facing increasing pressure on the supply of Group O blood stored in the emergency blood fridges. “We are endeavouring to manage this situation in an equitable manner by sharing the limited stocks across the country. A reduction of the current stock kept in these fridges may be enforced as a last resort. “Where possible, we urge clinicians to send a sample to the Blood Bank for crossmatched blood rather than to make use of blood kept in emergency fridges or emergency uncross matched blood.”
