Summer blood donation lull intensified in military towns
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Scott and White Blood Center blood mobile
On Wednesday morning, a brightly decorated RV sat in the Killeen Independent School District parking lot.
Inside, you could find school district employees like Brenda Wesley lying down in a chair donating a pint of blood.
"When I was in the hospital I needed blood, and so now that I have the opportunity to give back, I like to participate," she said.
According to Scott and White Hospital Blood Donor Recruiter Melissa Ainslie, donors like Wesley become especially important during the summer months.
"Summertime is one of the hardest times. People are on vacation, but then there's increased traffic on the highway, increased accidents," Ainslie said.
Ainslie said the blood-mobile helps to get those people, who otherwise do not want to make the drive to the hospital in Temple, in the door.
Donors go through same process as if they would at the hospital.
"The majority of the donations are on our blood mobile, so having the blood mobile out in the community and collecting the blood for our community is very important," she said.
In military communities like Killeen, however, Ainslie said staff deals with the added challenge of those soldiers who are willing to donate, but cannot.
"There has been an impact with a lot of those deployments, but we ask those family members to come in donate, so at least the blood supply is there," she said.
Service members who deploy overseas have to wait to donate blood.
To learn more about donating blood at Scott and White Hospital, click here
"When you come back from deployment, you're deferred for a year, so we don't see those donations," she said. "And if you get deployed again, then it's an even longer wait."
Sometimes, even military family members, stationed overseas, fall under blood-donor restrictions.
“A lot of them are already deferred, because they lived in Germany at one time," Ainslie said. "So we see a big decrease because of that. We generally see that in military areas where anywhere in Texas you generally won't see that as much."
According to Scott and White Hospital's blood donor eligibility requirements, those who lived in military bases in Germany for more than six months from 1980 to 1990 cannot donate because of variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (vCJD) risk.
To learn more about donating blood in the Austin area click here
Variant Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease is a fatal brain disease in humans, similar to the mad cow disease found in certain parts of the world.
Their eligibility requirements state that these potential donors cannot give blood since there is no test for (vCJD), and there is a possibility of the disease being transmitted through transfusion.
Ainslie said all blood donations collected in the community stay in the area.
Scott and White Hospital needs 1,400 units of blood every month.