Why donate blood?
The main goal of Bloedserieus is not to strike a few times a year. We want to convince students to join our loyal group of donors! Youngsters are underrepresented amongst blood donors, even though they are very suitable donors.
Plus, they are the largest group of those who receive blood by transfusion, because of the amount of accidents in the weekend. Each year approximately 10% of the donors drops out, because they reached the age limit or they become ill, for instance. Thus the Red Cross is always on the lookout for new donors. The minimum age to be a donor is 18, so we recruit following that logic: in cities where universities are stated, we find a huge population of students who are young and are perfect candidate donors.
Where and when donate blood, platelets or plasma?
Each day of the week you can donate blood, platelets or plasma at your nearest blood transfusion center. A complete list of addresses and opening hours of all the donation centers is available at www.bloedgevendoetleven.be.
The Red Cross needs you!
Blood
What is blood?
Blood is the red fluid that runs through our veins. Blood has many functions. Among others, it takes care of the transportation of oxygen and nutrients, but it is also a defending mechanism against intruders. Blood consists of approximately 55% of plasma, the other 45% contains red and white blood cells and platelets.
Every day there are people who need blood: during a surgery, childbirth, a traffic accident,… but also leukemia patients, people who suffer from anemia or hemophilia need blood.
There’s still no synthetic blood available, so when there’s a lack of blood, this could have serious consequences. Blood can only be preserved for 42 days. Therefore the Red Cross organizes blood drives on a regular basis.
At the end of a blood drive, the blood is thoroughly checked and carefully preserved. The blood is being divided into its components: so by donating 1 pint of blood you help more than 1 person!
Platelets
Platelets help stop bleedings.
Platelets are being shaped in the bone marrow and they are, together with the clotting factors, important to help stop bleedings. Platelets are given to leukemia patients, patients with serious blood loss, people who underwent a transplant or are in chemotherapy. Platelets can only be preserved for 5 days. You can sign yourself up as a donor for platelets. You will be called upon when needed.
Plasma
What is plasma?
Plasma is the liquid component of blood without the blood cells… and it is a vital blood component. It makes up about 55% of the total blood volume. It’s the straw-colored liquid that’s located between the red and white blood cells and the blood platelets. It consists of 93% of water and 7% of dissolved substances. The latter contains besides components of food (sugars and fats) hormones, vitamines and egg whites. It’s these egg whites (clotting factors, albumine and gammaglobulines) that serve as an aid in an emergency situations.
How does a plasma donation work?
A needle is placed in the vein of the arm and the whole blood is collected into an apheresis machine. The plasma is separated from the red blood cells and other cellular components, which are then returned to the donor. The straw-colored plasma is collected in a sterile plastic bag.
What’s the use of plasma?
Plasma helps burn victims, people who have a low defense mechanism, pregnant women, leukemia patients,… Plasma is used to make lifesaving products. Clotting factors ensure that patients with hemophilia can lead an almost normal life. Even women with serious bleeding after giving birth can be helped by plasma.
Antibodies who fight diseases, can help for example against tetanus and jaundice. protein preparations, such as albumine, are among other things useful to help burn victims and people in shock. Virus inactivated plasma is donated to patients undergoing major surgery. We need more plasma than derived from blood donations.
That’s why we also need volunteers who exclusively donate plasma. You can donate plasma more often (every 14 days) than blood, because you recover your blood cells: your body only needs 4 days to reproduce all the tissues. Plasma can be frozen to preserve for a longer period of time
… and bone marrow, stem cells
Adults, but also children can get severe blood diseases. Leukemia is the most common and known of them all. The initial treatment by transfusion of blood or plasma doesn’t always succeed. Since the possibility of a bone marrow transplant, the hope for a cure increased for a number of patients. Furthermore there’s a lot of research going on for the moment: research of new possibilities for therapy such as stem cell therapy, umbilical cord blood and gene therapy seem promising.
Many patients are excluded from a life-saving bone marrow transplant because they can’t find a suitable donor. The bone marrow of the donor must correspond with the bone marrow of the patient, otherwise rejection may occur. The odds of finding similar tissue types will be increased when searching within the own family members. But even then the chance of having a match is just 1 out of 4. That’s why it’s necessary to search for voluntary, non related donors to help a number of patients. The odds to find a donor in the Belgian population is estimated at 1 out of 50.000. The national donor bank, who collaborates with many donor banks from all around the world, keeps records of the candidate donors with their tissue type. The Belgian database still contains an insufficient amount of voluntary candidate donors. This database constantly has to be updated and renewed, hence with an opportunity like Bloedserieus, we wanted to bring this problem under your attention.
How do I become a bone marrow-/stem cell donor?
Everyone who is in a good physical health and younger than the age of 50 can serve as a candidate for bone marrow donor.
Initially there’s only a sample taken, to determine your tissue type. The results are integrated into a computer file. If a patient needs a donor, the database file is consulted, by request of the physician.
When finding a tissue type that matches donor and patient, the candidate donor will be called upon and invited to one of the donor centers. Here, the consent of the donor will be asked again. At any point in time the candidate donor can withdraw his consent entering the transplant program until the moment where the conditioning of the patient begins. If he decides to through with it, awaits a last physical check-up.
From here on many things can happen: extraction of the bone marrow under general anesthesia or extraction of the bone marrow cells by apheresis. Approximately 5% of the donor’s total bone marrow is extracted under general anesthesia. The marrow is taken from the bones of the pelvis. It’s a minimally invasive procedure. For the first day or so, he will sometimes feel tired, nauseous and sleepy. There is often also stiffness at the site of the needle puncture.
Only recently the harvesting of the stem cells is also possible by the use of a cell separator (aphresis). It’s a more time consuming procedure, but there’s no need for anesthesia. Of course both procedures aren’t submitted to any serious risks, nor financial effort. Furthermore, the donor is protected by an insurance.
On www.stamceldonor.be you can find information and there’s the possibility of registering for candidate donor. If you’re already registered as a blood donor, you can register yourself by filling out intention form and donating 1 extra tube of blood.
