Critical blood shortage
them where there may be potential delays in fulfilling blood orders.
“Cutbacks of these two blood groups will be enforced until the situation changes. We are also facing increasing pressure on the supply of group O blood stored in the Emergency Blood Fridges.
“We are endeavouring to manage this situation in an equitable manner by sharing the limited stocks across the country. A reduction of the current stock kept in these fridges may be enforced. We apologise for the inconvenience and difficulty resulting from these shortages but we can assure you that we are doing everything pos- sible to reverse the situation.”
Denise Coetzee, patient experience manager of Kimberley Mediclinic/Gariep, said yesterday that at this stage the hospital did not have any problems with blood supplies.
“We normally do not make use of a lot of blood during operations. The reason being that we do not perform cardiac bypass surgery in the hospital and that is the kind of surgery that normally requires a lot of blood transfusions.”
She said that in the case of hip and knee transplants, which also require blood transfusions and which the hospital does do quite regularly, the patient is offered one of two choices.
“Because the operation is scheduled weeks before the time, they can go and donate their blood at the blood bank to store for use during their operation, or we can put in a drain in the wound, capture the blood and transfuse it back into the patient.”
Coetzee added that the advantage of using one of these procedures was that there is no risk to the patient in receiving someone else’s blood, and it also ensured that there was blood available during the operation even if there was a countrywide shortage of blood.