Blood Donation
Why be a Blood Donor?
You could save and improve the lives of other people who desperately need your blood!
You never know when you or a loved one might need a blood transfusion and we want to make sure that everyone has well-matched life saving blood when they need it.
Traumatic blood loss is a leading cause of death in young people, and every two seconds someone needs a blood transfusion, yet supplies are chronically low.
Each year 130,000 new blood donors are needed. Around 50% of current blood donations come from those aged 45 years or older.
What most people don’t realise:
Donating blood only takes around 30-60 minutes
With one 470ml donation, you can save up to 3 lives.
So, if you were to donate every 3-4 months, even for just 5 years of your life, you could be saving up to 60 people’s lives!
Why we need more young blood donors
Young people are the blood donors and educators of the future! Around 50% of current blood donations come from those aged 45 years or older. This means we particularly need new young donors to safeguard the sustainability of blood stocks in the future. Donors who start donating blood when they are young can potentially go on donating blood for many years. We need to make sure we have sustainable blood stocks available now and for years to come.
University is a time where young people develop their interests and values and start forming life-long habits. It is a time when people from a diverse range of backgrounds mix and have open conversations with each other.
But blood donation can be confusing, and many young people don’t know how to donate, what the restrictions are, and whether they can donate or not. We want to change that!
Why we need more diverse donors
While we need more blood donors generally, we need more Black blood donors in particular. 40,000 to be exact!
This is because people of Black heritage are more likely to have:
- Rare subtypes of blood such as Ro
- Blood conditions such as sickle cell anaemia, which requires managing with regular blood transfusions
The existence of rare blood subtypes mean that matching donated blood with a recipient is difficult. Receiving blood that’s closely matched to your own is important so that your immune system doesn’t reject it.
If you have multiple blood transfusions the risk of these immune reactions increase. So we want to make sure that patients receiving multiple transfusions, such as those with sickle cell anaemia, can have the best matched blood available.
See our diversity page for more information
