THE BLOOD PORTFOLIO
Broadly speaking, blood products are divided into the following categories:
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Red cell products – to restore oxygen-carrying capacity in patients who have low haemoglobin levels usually following extensive blood loss or due to severe anaemia
Plasma products – to restore blood clotting proteins, for example after a massive haemorrhage
Platelet products – to normalise patients’ platelet counts (platelets pay a critical role in early blood clotting and maintaining haemostasis), for example in patients who have had a massive haemorrhage, or who have insufficient platelets due to bone marrow malignancies and while undergoing bone marrow transplantation that the products are compatible with the patient’s blood type.
“After crossmatching, blood products are issued in a specialised container which we call a hamper, designed to keep them at a specific optimal temperature during transport to the hospital and, ultimately, to the patient’s bedside for transfusion by clinical staff.”
Transporting the precious cargo is WCBS’s fleet of around 80 vehicles.
Operating the vehicle fleet and other vital frontline and back office functions are a team of 530 staff members, the service being headquartered in Cape Town with regional offices in the smaller towns of Paarl, Worcester and George.
While much of the processing and testing work is centralised in Cape Town, blood is collected across the length and breadth of the Western Cape from fixed site donation clinics, mobile clinics and even pop-up caravan and bus facilities.
The province itself is home to 6.6 million people, and around 72,000 of them are voluntary blood donors who between them donate around 156,000 units of whole blood and 4,000 units of single-donor platelets a year.
This donation pool supplies eight blood banks which provide blood products to 140 state and private hospitals on a 24-seven, 365 days a year basis. A further 102 emergency blood banks are situated in the hospitals themselves, these being stocked with group O blood, from what are known as universal donors.
Today’s operation is a far cry from the organisation which was established in 1938 at Groote Schuur Hospital. Back then, only 200 donors were on the books and an average of 30 transfusions a month were being carried out, although the practice was in its infancy during the 1930s.
The process was also entirely different. The donors themselves would transfer blood directly to the recipient with just a screen separating them, a key series of turning points arriving in the 1940s when new premises were found and mobile units established, enabling a wider scouting mission for donors across the Western Cape.