this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Blood donations have fallen to catastrophic levels. Experts say young people need to step up. (www.nbcnews.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Donations have to cover the costs of day operations. They need to be pay their employees, purchase supplies, money towards the buildings and/or vehicles they use, etc. I don't know how much hospitals are paying for each donation unit, so I can't speak on that. Blood donation centers might have a hard time operating on just monetary donations they receive. Paying donars for each donation would open the door to shady and ineligible people wanting some quick cash. There are places that pay for plasma, but I don't have experience with them, so I've never looked into how they operate.

My personal experience. I had to pause donating platelets recently due to a medical issue, but I have donated regularly for the last few years. I've never done it for t-shirts or gifts. I donated because platelets help people. The Red Cross has a feature that will usually tell where your donation went after itvhas been processed. I would always have good day when mine was shipped to a children's hospital. I hope I can start donating again soon.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

This is it. People have to stop believing that paying staff is apparently a "waste of funds".

As a specialist in my industry, I don't work at schools and nonprofits, not because I don't want to, but because their pay is usually half of the industry average. It's sad. And you can't "donate your speciality" to these places either. Nobody wants a volunteer specialist.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I’ve looked into plasma, apparently a lot of the world won’t use US plasma because we pay donors for it, it does incentivize bad behavior, and most countries won’t allow plasma donation any more frequently than blood donation. Which is every 8-ish weeks. We can do two donations a week (and it’s incentivized to encourage just that). Some desperate people game the system to do it at multiple places, even resorting to eating various things (like ketchup packets) to trick the blood tests.

But even then these companies sell it for enough (I think it’s used for cancer treatments?) to make enough on the domestic market that even paying for it is highly profitable.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

apparently a lot of the world won’t use US plasma because we pay donors for it

well not just that but also a history of lying about it and continuing to sell blood that they knew was infected...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products