Less than three percent of Kiwis donate blood

Currently only 115,000 Kiwis donate which equates to less than three percent of the population. 

In order to meet demand the blood service needs up to 40,000 more donors to donate either whole blood or plasma. 

Manager of marketing and communications for the New Zealand Blood Service, Asuka Burge, explains every year 22,000 donors stop donating for a variety of reasons.

These reasons range anywhere from people moving away, medical reasons, or people who have just dropped the habit.

Blood transfusions are used for treating patients with chronic anaemia, kidney failure, cancer and blood loss from surgery or trauma. 

However, blood transfusions aren’t the only way blood is used. It can be used to control bleeding following cardiac surgery and trauma or to help patients undergoing treatments for blood diseases and cancer.

Plasma is taken from blood and is full of proteins and antibodies which can treat people with immunity disorders and trauma victims.

Some people require plasma transfusions every week just to live normally and others may need one every two weeks or once a month, but can be on it for a very long time. 

There is an eligibility criteria that applies to blood donations to keep the blood supply safe but this means many people who want to donate, can’t. 

Examples of people who can’t donate are people who lived in the UK during the Mad Cow Disease outbreak, people who have or have had cancer, and people with Hepatitis A, B or C. 

Many people who don’t fit the criteria are calling for it to be reassessed, especially those from the UK. 

The disease spread in the 80’s through to the early 2000’s. Australia has recently dropped this from its blood donation criteria. 

Burge believes many people do not donate because they don’t find the time to get around to it and assume there are already enough donors. 

“With the demand going up so much, we do actually need more donors to enable us to have the blood stock there when it’s needed."

Casey Foote has never thought about donating her blood before.

“I don’t really like the thought of my blood being taken and I figure there are already enough donors braver than me.”

Burge says the next step is for people to find out their eligibility and what blood group they are as some blood types are like gold. 

The O- blood type is universal and is used for emergencies, A+ and O+ make up most of the population and the B’s and AB’s are great for plasma donations. 

Burge says the blood service is trying everything it can to find more donors.

“At the moment we do advertising through various channels, social media, TV, print, billboards and orientation weeks at universities.”

They understand there are barriers to donating but will continue to work on making blood donation as easy as possible.