Canadian Hospitals To Postpone Elective Surgeries Amid Blood Shortage

October 31, 2008 4:30 p.m. EST

Ottawa, Ontario (AHN) - The Canadian Blood Services appealed on Friday for more blood donations as its supply dropped by 40 percent in the last two months. As of Thursday the CBS had only two days supply for common blood types, while its normal reservoir is four to six days.

Ron Vezina, CBS director of media relations, said the situation could not be considered a crisis, but it wants to avoid reaching that level of shortage. "We're vulnerable right now... We haven't heard about any surgical or cases being either postponed or delayed, but we've been rationing shipments to the hospitals for long enough now that we think, if things don't turn around soon, that might be inevitable," Vezina told the Canadian Press.

The CBS attributed the low supply to hesitancy on the part of Canadians to donate blood since 50 percent of them are eligible to give, but only one in 60 had donated in the past 12 months. However, demand has gone up by over 3 percent for the past three years while the CBS list of active donors have even gone down by 0.7 percent.

The CBS has 400,000 active donors on its roster. To maintain a healthy and stable supply of blood, only 90,000 are needed to donate blood once a month. Medical standards recommend that donors place a 56-day each time they donate blood.

In the meantime while waiting for more donors to step forward, hospitals were advised to postpone non-urgent surgeries like abdominal and vascular operations which would need a large supply of blood.