by Rod Hughes
The nation’s stocks of blood are at a serious low, due to a lack of donors. The situation is not helped by the mechanical failure in one of the big freezers that forced health authorities to destroy 15,000 sacks of stored plasma.
The National Blood Bank, serving 29 Social Security (Caja) hospitals, needs 30 donors per day to meet the needs and only two on the average have been showing up, said a spokesperson for the bank. This deficit of hemoglobin forces hospitals from time to time to suspend surgeries or treatment of cancer cases urgently needing hemoglobin, since the only blood available is earmarked for emergencies.
Jimmy Villalobos, chief of the bank, said that the only salvation are private blood banks. Just yesterday, the bank obtained 150 sacks of whole blood from a private source, he told the daily La Nacion. This temporarily alleviated the problem. But the downside to this is that each sack costs 100,000 colones.
The bank is accustomed to donor absence during such major holidays as Christmas and Holy Week (Easter) but the low turnout for donations recently is a serious situation.
Persons in good health may donate blood at any Caja hospital or at the National Blood Bank headquarters in Zapote.