Special Days – An Appeal to Scotland’s Donors

Blood has a shelf life of up to 35 days, so why do we badly need people to come forward to our Donor Centres on special days such as Christmas Eve, Boxing Day, Hogmanay and 2nd January?

Your donation is split into three separate parts – red cells, platelets and plasma.

For red cells, freshly donated blood is needed for Scotland’s most vulnerable patients. For example, babies who need tiny paediatric packs where only a small amount of blood is required. And blood used for neonate intra uterine transfusion (when baby receives blood in mum’s womb), is never more than 5 days old.

Platelets have the shortest shelf life of any major component – only 7 days. We are grateful to Scotland’s 1,166 platelet donors, who help provide over half of Scotland’s platelet supply. But to meet hospital demand, we must also manufacture essential platelets from O+, A+, O- and A- whole blood donations. It takes 4 whole blood donations to make one unit of platelets.

Your plasma donation is also essential, and is needed for Clinical Plasma, and Plasma for Medicines.

We know coming into the city centre at such a busy time is not for everyone. But it’s Christmas for our community venues too – so on these special days we find our community venues are unavailable.

This means, by giving up one hour of your time, your donation will work really hard for Scotland’s patients at this critical time of year. Thank you.

• Please do book your appointment now: online, or call us at 0345 90 90 999 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm)