With record low temperatures keeping people indoors this winter, inventory levels at blood banks around the nation have dropped below the recommended safe-supply threshold.
"Giving blood is a good way to stimulate your body's circulation and save someone else's life. You kill two birds with one stone when you donate blood," said Department of Health Deputy Director Lee Long-teng (李龍騰), as he waited his turn to donate blood at a mobile blood center.
According to the Chinese Blood Services Foundation, the amount of blood currently available can only supply the nation for five days at most. The foundation said it was safe to have at least seven days' supply of blood on hand in the event of an emergency.
The foundation also said that the main reason for the drop in donations was the cold weather and accompanying rain.
The Lunar New Year holiday and the fact that students were currently on winter break were also probable reasons for the low supply, foundation representatives said.
In an effort to promote blood donations, the department has teamed up with the foundation and launched a week-long drive taking mobile blood centers to several government facilities.
Yang Bao-yu (
The department reported that, after the close of blood donation centers yesterday evening, a total of 212 people had donated 246 units of blood for the day, the equivalent of 61,500cm3.
In Taipei, 1,500 units of blood are used daily. While the foundation aims to have at least 10,500 units, or roughly a week's worth of blood, available at any given time, records from Thursday indicated that the city currently only has about 7,000 units of blood, of which only 3,450 units can be used immediately.
Each unit contains 250cm3 of blood.
There is enough type-A blood to meet demand for 2.2 days, enough type-B blood for 2 days, enough type-O blood for 2.1 days and enough type-AB blood for 5.3 days in the Taipei region, according to yesterday's inventory.
The foundation aims to have at least 40,100 units of blood stored throughout the country, but only 29,700 units of blood are currently available.
While only 5.18 percent of the population donated blood in 1996, the year the foundation was first established, the donation rate had climbed to 9.71 percent by the end of 2002, the foundation said.
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