Dave Talks to Roswell Park About the Importance of Donating Blood

In these tough times, donating blood is more important than ever. A single blood donation can help save up to three lives, and there's an urgent need for blood right now across Western New York. Joining me today to discuss this further is Maria Turner, marketing and communications director for Roswell Park Donor Center, which is calling on the local community to help with blood and platelet donations for its patients. Check out our conversation below:

You guys have all sorts of things aside from COVID-19 that you still need blood for, correct?

Absolutely, Dave. That's a great point. We know that COVID dominates the news coverage but there are other medical emergencies that haven't stopped, so we are always looking to the community to help support us by way of blood and platelet donations for the patients here at Roswell Park.

Without community blood drives, how are you making up for that loss of blood? 

We're seeing a big impact due to that. Due to the cancellations of school drives, corporate drives, and community drives across the country, there's been an impact of over a million donation appointments because of that, so we feel that as well. Even though at Roswell Park we have our own collection facility, we're not 100% self-sufficient, so we do rely on other vendors across the country. When they're short, it impacts us, because then we're short too.

If people want to make a donation, how can they become a donor?

It's very easy. All they would have to do is call our number at (716) 845-8275 or go to the Roswell Park website and look for the donor center to schedule an appointment online. We pay for parking, they walk in, and they're right at the donor center in a comfortable chair, they can have snacks. Within a matter of an hour or two, depending on what they're donating, they've contributed to the wellness of one of our local cancer patients.

Speaking of the type of blood they're donating, is there a certain type of blood that you need or platelets?

We always need platelets. We transfuse more platelets here at Roswell Park than all the hospitals combined in Western New York because of being a cancer facility, so we always need platelets. That's our staple. Type-O blood is also always needed as well as convalescent plasma, which is taken from folks who have been previously positive for COVID-19 and recovered. It's collected here at Roswell and transfused all throughout the Western New York community to COVID patients to help them with their healing.