Need for blood doesn’t take summer break — Donate in NJ today
During the summer, blood donations slow down, along with a lot of other things. What does not slow down is the urgent need for blood at New Jersey hospitals.
Alana Mauger of the American Red Cross says they issued an emergency call for donations in July, and that raised the rate by about 30 percent.
The nonprofit issued an emergency call for blood donations on July 5 after seeing donations fall in May and June to 61,000 donations below what’s needed.
“We need to collect around 1,000 donations every day to meet our patient demand in our region,” Mauger said. “We are still seeing that blood is going out of the hospitals as soon as donations are coming in. So we really still need people come out and give blood and help us make up that deficit.”
Mauger says high schools and colleges, which are prime blood drive locations, are out of the picture in summer.
“A lot of people do not think about giving blood in the summer, quite frankly. They are busy on vacation.”
She says they hope to stabilize by early September and get back on track.
Mauger says donating blood is easy. You can find a drive near you by checking redcrossblood.org and typing in your ZIP code.
Joe Cutter is the afternoon news anchor on New Jersey 101.5