Red Cross Reports Blood Shortage in East

The regional office of the American Red Cross on Wednesday reported its most critical blood shortage in three years, forcing changes in surgical schedules and threatening care at 93 hospitals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Nationally, critical shortages also were reported in parts of Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Virginia. Most of the nation was experiencing a normal post-holiday tightening of supplies, officials said.

Other Red Cross centers such as those in Los Angeles, Kentucky, Maine and Massachusetts said they had ample supplies, ensuring that enough blood products could be distributed to other regions in the event of a disaster.

The Red Cross collects about 6.2 million units of blood per year, or more than half of the nation’s blood supply. A unit is 450 milliliters, or slightly less than a pint.

Severe cold weather in December combined with the usual drop in donations at holiday time to create the crisis in five southeastern Pennsylvania counties and nine southern New Jersey counties, said Dr. William C. Sherwood, director of the Red Cross Penn-Jersey Region.

“Supplies are so low that over New Year’s weekend we curtailed distribution of red cells and platelets sharply and worked with physicians and hospitals on a case-by-case basis,” Sherwood said.

A heart bypass operation was postponed for two hours Tuesday at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, said Dr. Ierachmiel Daskal, chairman of the hospital’s department of pathology. The blood went to an emergency case.

The Penn-Jersey region, which provides 94% of the blood used in 93 hospitals in eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, needs about 1,750 donors a day and was down to about 1,000 donors daily. In Atlanta, daily donations had dropped to half of the 900 units collected normally and an appeal was issued for type-O blood.

Similar emergency appeals were under way in the Great Lakes blood region, based in Lansing, Mich.; the Tidewater region, based in Norfolk, Va.; the Tucson region, and the southern Florida region.

Blood supplies generally tighten every year during the holiday season and again during the summer because donors become involved in other activities.