By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Community Blood Centers in Kansas City and St. Joseph are on standby if blood is needed to help victims of Hurricane Ian, but supplying blood might be difficult.
Spokeswoman Chelsey Smith says the blood supply currently is critically low, and the need for donors is urgent.
"We were able to provide about 180 blood products to blood centers impacted by Hurricane Ian down in the southeast," Smith tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "We are standing by in the event that they do need additional help, however it's not just our blood center, it's blood centers nationally are reaching out to help them."
Smith says the need for blood locally is so urgent, because of a lack of donors that have been coming in, a number that has been dropping the past two years.
Smith says when the initial call came out for donors just ahead of Hurricane Ian hitting Florida, the number of donors did jump slightly.
"But not nearly enough to continue to sustain us continually sending blood to Florida," Smith says. "So, we are helping as much as we can, and like I mentioned are on standby if they ask for more help from us, but we are very limited in our ability to be able to supply blood to them simply because we're not even meeting local need."
Smith says the number of blood donors has continually dropped over the last two years, largely in part due to effects from the coronavirus pandemic.
Smith says in 2019 they saw 25,000 donors donating regularly, but now that's not the case. Smith says they are doing everything they can to make donating blood easy
"So, we're hoping that if you're one of those 25,000 that was regularly donating, whether that be a workplace drive or somewhere else and you haven't been back, please know that the need has never been greater than it is right now and we need you to come back," Smith pleads.
Smith says the hope is that the urgent need for blood is not falling on deaf ears, and that people are hearing and understanding how desperate the need is.