Blood: Emphasizing impact

“I know everybody can’t. I can’t. But if you can’t, do something to help get the word out and raise awareness,” Conway said of becoming a blood donor.

Issuing challenges

Mike Glover, of Midwest City, recently gave blood and is helping to raise awareness in the black community about blood donation.

Glover, 45, took the blood institute’s challenge — and issued a challenge of his own.

As he gave blood at the institute’s donor center at 901 N Lincoln, Glover said it was his second time to donate. He said he hadn’t made blood donation a priority over the years because he had never considered the urgency of blood donation.

Glover said he recently challenged the pastor of his church, Bethlehem Star Baptist Church, to consider donating blood. He said he would like to see other black pastors and black congregations make the same decision in an effort to help others in the community.

“I hope they will accept the challenge,” he said. “It will be a surprise, but I hope it will catch on.”

Overcoming barriers

Marcikus Long, the institute’s Be The Match recruiter, said she came up with the idea for the Black History Month challenge because she thought it was a good time to emphasize to blacks that donating blood is a positive way to affect the entire community.

Long, who is black, said she knows that there are several reasons more blacks don’t donate blood, and she’s hoping the new initiative will help overcome some of them.

Long said a mistrust of the medical community is one of the barriers that keeps blacks from donating blood. She said fear of the unknown also is an obstacle for some blacks who don’t know much about the process of blood donation.

“I’ve heard so many stories come back from people saying ‘I didn’t realize it was going to be that easy,’ ” she said. “I often joke that people get tattoos, but they won’t come and donate.”

Long said one of the major factors that helps blacks overcome the barriers keeping them from blood donation is the realization of how many lives are saved through blood donation.

“It’s a way to give back. Take an hour out of your day to save people’s lives,” Long said. “It’s a lot easier than people

think.”

Why ethnicity may matter

Gamble said it’s vital for the community’s blood supply to reflect the diversity of the population to best meet patients’ needs.

She said for some patients, the closest genetic matches of blood are key to their survival. Local donors with similar ethnicity and genetics make that possible, since every drop of blood for patients in all Oklahoma City metro-area hospitals and 150 other hospitals across the state comes from Oklahoma Blood Institute donors.

The institute’s chief medical officer, Dr. James Smith, shared similar comments.

“Each different racial group all around the world will have slightly different molecules — markers — on their red cells, so African-Americans are different than the typical Caucasian and different than, say, Asians. These markers are the proteins and sugars that your body recognizes, just like it would a foreign bacteria, for instance,” Smith said.

“So, if you get blood that has markers you don’t have, your body makes an antibody to that. In the African-American population, for instance, there are particular antigens with different frequencies than in Caucasian populations. Exposure to those red blood cells may cause the patient to form antibodies. When blood is needed to match those specific antibodies, it is more likely to come from a blood donor in that same ethnic group where the lack of the antigen makes the blood cells compatible. They have likely inherited that different set of molecules.”

Conway said the importance of a good blood “cross-match” struck home with her family when her daughter had a reaction to a transfusion because of "cross-match" complications.

Conway said her daughter needed more blood because of these complications.

“We need to have it (donated blood) available for people who need it at all times. I would say that not just for my daughter, but for anyone,” she said. “We need to have it stacked and ready to go.”