Urgent appeal for West Country blood donors as stocks fall over Christmas

The NHS has urged West Country blood donors to come forward after demand over the Christmas week exceeded collections by almost 3,000 units.

Cold weather, winter viruses and busy diaries mean donations tend to drop over the festive period.

But England remains in an Amber alert for low blood stocks and almost 11,000 appointments are available at donation centres across the country over the next fortnight.

People with O negative, B negative and Ro blood types are particularly needed in the coming weeks.

George Clark, manager of hospital services Plymouth at NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "Normally, we would have crates filling up all of these racks and all of these shelves when we’re on a good stock level day. 

"At the minute, we are still recovering from the Bank Holidays over Christmas and New Year and we’ve just got to wait for some more donors to come in to help the stocks nationally come back up."

Bristol's Southmead Hospital collects around 18,000 units a year and has the capacity for more. 

In the next six weeks, around 3,000 appointment vacancies are available at the hospital alone.

'We've seen an increased demand'

Ruth Bilbe, area matron for NHS Blood and Transplant said: "We are always worried about our blood stocks. It's one of the most important things for our organisation. 

"We also acknowledge that we have ups and downs with our capacity of blood donors as well. We want to do anything we can at the moment to encourage donors to attend.

"This Christmas we've seen an increased demand from patients in hospital for whole blood, and that the demand has been greater by about 3,000 units than we were able to supply."

Poppy Burns, donor carer at NHS Blood and Transplant added around 200,000 new donors are needed each year.

"The donation population is an ageing population," she said.

"With age comes illnesses and a lot of illnesses, when you catch them or when you get them, you can’t actually donate anymore so we need new, young donors to fill the space just to keep the ball rolling."

The NHS is encouraging people to donate blood and more information can be found here.

It has also issued details on the donation process and what to expect for first-time donors.