Donors Answer the Call for Blood

With the Pentagon calling Thursday for a tripling of civilian blood donations, hundreds of Los Angeles and Orange County residents, many saying they wanted to support the American war effort, jammed the region’s blood donation centers.

“You’ve got to do whatever you can, whatever it is,” said Dave Navarro, 35, a Los Angeles police detective giving blood during his lunch hour at the American Red Cross center on Sherman Way. Several of Navarro’s fellow police officers who are reservists are already in the Persian Gulf. He said his Army reserve unit is on standby.

“I’m not a regular blood donor, but this is a different situation now,” he said.

Every cot, every interview room and every seat in the waiting area was filled Thursday soon after the center opened. Donors watched television news of the war as they waited; trays of cookies and juice were emptied by those who had finished as fast as volunteers could fill them.

Red Cross regional spokeswoman Cheryle Babbitt said donations at centers in the region had doubled, tripled or even quadrupled from normal levels. But even the increased number of donors has not replenished the local blood supply, which had dropped to an annual low point after Christmas.

She said Los Angeles and Orange counties currently would have difficulty contributing to national blood supplies.

“The public response has been good, and we appreciate it, but we’re not where we need to be,” Babbitt said.

The Defense Department usually meets the demands for blood and blood products through its Armed Services Blood Program, made up of current and retired military personnel and their families.

As a backup, however, the Pentagon also holds longstanding contracts with the American Red Cross and the American Assn. of Blood Banks, two private agencies that also supply the nation’s civilian demand.

The Pentagon on Dec. 17 asked the American Red Cross and the American Assn. of Blood Banks to each ship 375 pints of blood a week to the gulf region. That volume was increased in early January to 1,000 units per week, which Babbitt said has been supplied by other regions with more ample supplies than the Los Angeles area.

On Thursday, the Pentagon asked each agency to provide an additional 1,000 pints a day for Friday, Saturday and Sunday only. The shipments are to be flown from the McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey on Saturday.

Liz Hall, a Red Cross blood programs official, and Marcia Lane, a spokeswoman for the blood banks group, agreed that there is plenty of blood available to meet the stepped-up request. “We’re able to meet the extra 3,000 units immediately,” Hall said.

But the Los Angeles region, among the nation’s largest, may not have enough to help out. The region’s overall blood supply jumped from 26% of normal on Monday to 45% by Thursday, but a critical shortage of the type O blood, the most common, remained. Babbitt said the region had collected 18% of the amount of type O negative blood usually kept on hand and 25% of the type O positive blood.

The Van Nuys center has collected between 115 and 120 pints of blood daily this week, up from the average of 45, Babbitt said. The Red Cross regional headquarters at 11th and Vermont in Los Angeles had to move to a nearby auditorium this week because about 75 donors instead of the usual 15 to 20 showed up each day beginning with the Tuesday deadline for Saddam Hussein’s forces to leave Kuwait.

Babbitt said the busiest center in the region was in Santa Ana, where 148 pints of blood were donated Tuesday instead of the usual average of about 25, and a similar amount was collected on Wednesday. The Huntington Beach center was collecting about four times its average of 25 pints a day and in Long Beach donations more than doubled.

Many of the donors were first-timers such as John Jessick, 27, who acknowledged that it took news of the war to overcome his qualms about giving blood. “I’ve been a CNN junkie for the last 24 hours and this is what it took,” said Jessick, of Sun Valley, who was at the Van Nuys Red Cross center.

Anne Biege, a Red Cross spokeswoman in the San Fernando Valley, said “a lot of people are coming in under the assumption that this blood is going directly to the Middle East. What we are doing here is replenishing our own supply.”

Although some donors have been disappointed with that news, they donate anyway.

“Every pint given here, even if it fills up the local supply, is going to have a positive effect,” said Rick Hoefel, 38, who is also a police detective based in Van Nuys.

“Those guys are over there protecting us and I’ve three kids and I want to help.”

Colvin reported from Los Angeles and Chen from Washington.

The American Red Cross operates a dozen blood centers in Los Angeles and Orange counties. People wishing to donate blood can get information about locations and operating hours by calling (213) 739-5200 in Los Angeles, (818) 376-1700 in the San Fernando Valley and (714) 835-5381 in Orange County.