COLLECTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF HUMAN BLOOD

Every now and then, I get calls from friends and friends of friends, and even from complete strangers who ask for my help in getting supplies of human blood that are needed for surgeries. That is not something that I usually do, but since the requests are usually urgent and would involve life and death situations, I always try to help by contacting friends in the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) and the Philippine Blood Center (PBC). The fact that people come to me for help is a sign I think that there is a flaw in the system of collecting and distributing human blood. Otherwise, there is no need to contact people like me when blood is needed, because the system could work by itself without any human intervention. Maybe there is even a system, but people do not really know how to make use of it, perhaps due to lack of information. Perhaps, some hospitals are not too quick in informing the families of patients that human blood is actually available from PRC and PBC, but of course it has to be requested. I think one problem now is that some hospitals actually require the families of patients to look for blood on their own, instead of them taking the initiative to request these from PRC or PBC. I think that the long-term solution to this problem is to enable all hospitals to have their own on-premise blood banks. If they have that, they can just tap PRC or PBC as backup sources in cases of shortages or emergencies. IKE SENERES/01-23-2024