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WA blood shortage critical for sickle cell patients
The Pacific Northwest is one mass tragedy away from a blood supply crisis.
SEATTLE - Across the country, fewer people are donating blood every day. We’ve seen emergency alerts from the American Red Cross for the last few years outlining a blood supply that’s plummeted to an all-time low.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, the situation is no different. We’re one mass-tragedy away from a blood supply crisis, according to Bloodworks Northwest, our area's main blood bank.
The organization issued a "code red" after reaching an emergency level last month with patient needs outpacing community donations. They’ve stayed in that status since, pleading for more donors to step up.
By the numbers:
Kirsten Alcorn, the co-chief medical officer at Bloodworks NW says only 3% of the people who live in this area donate blood.
"If we had 20,000 more donors across the millions of people who live in this region the blood supply would be lovely," explained Alcorn.
For patients with blood disorders who rely on transfusions to live, the blood shortage cuts deeper.
Local perspective:
The parents of 5-year-old Saniyah Henry say every time their daughter is sent to the hospital for a blood transfusion, it's increasingly more difficult to find a match for her.
Saniyah is one of 100,000 people living with sickle cell disease in the United States.
"My husband and I didn’t know we even carried trait until we got pregnant with her," her mom Andrenika Henry told Fox 13.
The disease causes red blood cells to change shape and get stuck throughout a patient’s bloodstream, oxygen getting trapped along with them. It can damage a patient’s bones and organs, and even cause a stroke. Patients often describe excruciating pain.
"Extreme pain can be quite traumatizing," stated Alexis Dassler, an advanced registered nurse practitioner on the sickle cell program team at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Saniyah’s pediatrician. "That trauma lives inside of you and actually changes your biology."
"The monsters actually bite me," Saniyah told us, painting a picture of what that pain feels like to a 5 year old.
Seattle Children’s treats the most kids with sickle cell disease in the region. There, Saniyah’s undergone five blood transfusions since she was born, with more expected throughout her lifetime living with the disease.
"I just wish I could give her my own [blood], but I can’t because we’re the reason she has it," said Andrenika. "So I have to rely on everyone around me to just donate, donate, donate."
When it comes to finding a donor match for sickle cell patients, it goes well beyond blood type like o-negative or b-positive, all the way down to the subgroup and markers on the donor's red blood cells. If the match isn’t perfect, a blood transfusion can do more harm than good.
The patient’s body can reject donor blood and flush it out of their system, taking more healthy blood in the process.
"You go from having lots of red blood cells to really severe life-threatening anemia," explained Dassler.
Across all patients living with sickle cell, including Saniyah, 90% are black. The majority of blood donors in the PNW are white, according to Bloodworks NW. This makes the need for diverse blood donors even more crucial because blood-markers are more likely to match within the same ethnic group.
For being one of the most common genetic blood disorders globally, doctors and researchers also say sickle cell disease is underfunded and under researched. You can find more information about what Seattle Children’s is doing to support sickle cell disease patients here.
Every blood donation counts, you can schedule your donation with Bloodworks Northwest here.
In the next few weeks, Saniyah is scheduled for a splenectomy which will hopefully stop blood from getting trapped in her spleen, but also opens her up to a lifetime of being more sensitive and susceptible to infection. You can help her family here.
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The Source: Information for this article comes from original FOX 13 Seattle interviews and Bloodworks Northwest.
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