Our Blood Institute is offering an extra gift between now and Tuesday with a donation at any donor center or mobile blood drive.
According to a news release, the organization will be giving donors a blanket or stainless-steel insulated tumbler along with a long-sleeved T-shirt.
"They get their choice of T-shirt, but they also get their choice of the tumbler or a blanket," Joshua Gwin, a marketing specialist with Our Blood Institute, said. "And we do this stuff to incentivize people to come out and donate, especially around the holidays, because it's really difficult.
"People are so busy. They're either traveling, or they just got back from traveling. What we see as far as our blood bank goes is we see that our numbers dip fairly significantly. The amount of outgoing blood is quite a bit larger than the amount of incoming, which is why we try to offer these little things, especially around the holidays, because there's just a great need for keeping the blood supply stable for hospitals and patients."
Arkansas has a fairly stable number of donors, Gwin said, but there is only about a three-day supply of blood in the state.
"We like to be at about a five-day supply," he said. "Blood's only good for about 41 days on the shelf, so the supply constantly has to be replenished. The biggest issue with need right now -- and a lot of people just don't realize -- is that a lot of surgeries can't even happen unless there's a certain amount of blood on the shelves in hospitals."
Surgeons require a certain amount of blood ready for transfusion before any surgeries in case any issues arise during the procedure, Gwin said.
"If he doesn't have that, he cancels your surgery," he said. "Fortunately, we live in a time where, for the most part, that usually doesn't cause cancellations. We've gotten close before.
"That can definitely cause issues if you happen to be one of those people that have a really rare blood type and then they don't have, you know what they need. So that may take a couple of days for them to find something for you. So that's what we're in the business to do is to make sure our hospitals have what they need."
Dr. John Armitage, president and CEO of OBI, said donations take about an hour and save lives.
"It's our engaged community that ensures the local blood supply is able to meet the demand of local patients," he said in the release. "As we wrap up the holiday season, we encourage you to take just an hour out of your busy schedule to give blood. You can feel the joy of saving a life with your blood donation and receive a cozy gift from Our Blood Institute!"
Donations can be made at the local donor center at 149 Section Line Road, any of the other donor centers across the state or at a mobile blood drive. There will be a donation center set up across from Dillard's at Uptown Hot Springs, 4501 Central Ave., from 12:30-5 p.m. today.
Our Blood Institute, formerly known as Oklahoma Blood Institute, encompasses blood centers in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas, and the organization is currently going through a rebranding process, Gwin said.
"We are now collectively -- with all of those individual companies under the umbrella of Oklahoma Blood Institute -- are the sixth-largest blood provider in the United States," he said.
"Now, what's become increasingly difficult is to mass communicate. Instead of having four different websites, now we're collapsing into one, where we're able to communicate a singular message across all of those markets. The reality is the name is changing to Our Blood Institute because we really wanted to find a name that focused on unity, which is still kind of a nod to OBI."
Gwin said OBI does not plan to do a "hard" rebranding and change the names on the donor centers and other buildings to keep from creating significant issues for the organization as a whole.
"The executives made a decision: we're not going to try to change names on buildings, and we're not going to do this hard thing where it's just a real major shock to the system," he said.
"It's still going to be Arkansas Blood Institute or arkbi.org as far as the website. It'll still work. ... Everything really from management down has remained completely the same. Only thing that's changed is we've updated the logo and just kind of the idea of trying to be able to communicate under one umbrella."
Blood donated in Arkansas will still remain in the state, although the state consistently has to bring in blood from other states to keep supplies consistent with demand.
"All the blood that's collected in Arkansas stays in Arkansas," Gwin said. "Our main bank and testing facility is in Oklahoma City, but we ship the blood to Oklahoma City and then it comes right back. And it's distributed to our hospitals as they need it.
"As a matter of fact, Arkansas uses more blood than we collect in the state. We're trying to fix that now. We use about 80,000 units of blood products in a calendar year here in the state of Arkansas. We only collect around 40,000. ... So we actually bring blood in from Oklahoma and some of our other areas that are able to support the additional need while we're working on building our collection right here in Arkansas."
The release says people who are 16 years old or older and in good health can donate blood every 56 days, and platelets can be donated every seven days up to 24 times a year.
To make an appointment to donate, visit https://www.obi.org or call 877-340-8777.
The door of the Arkansas Blood Institute is shown. ABI will be giving away a blanket or an insulated tumbler in addition to the choice of a long-sleeved T-shirt to anyone who donates blood before Tuesday. - Photo by Donald Cross of The Sentinel-Record