It could be the first resolution of the year, quick and easy to turn into action: donate blood.
A little, and yet enough to save three lives ... Faced with the particularly tense health situation, against the backdrop of the exponential progression of the omicron variant, which does not encourage frequentation of collection places, and a holiday period which traditionally sees drop in donations, the stocks of blood products of the French Blood Establishment (EFS) are more fragile than ever.
“Every day of the year, 10,000 blood donations are needed to meet the needs of patients, and the current reserves are only 80,000 bags… It would take 115,000 to meet the needs of hospitals at this time and on the first weeks of the year ”, alarms the ESF, which appeals to all donors.
Mandatory health pass
Facing and covering the needs of the sick requires urgent mobilization that the staff of the EFS, on the bridge even if it means shortening their vacations, hope to be effective from this first week of January. Ten new collection points will open in Paris and in several cities in the Ile-de-France region by mid-January, (list and go to dondesang.efs.sante.fr, and on the Don de sang app), and the EFS is organizing a new event operation, this Wednesday, January 5, in the atypical setting of the Accor Arena in Bercy (12th century).
An opportunity to join the (very) useful to the pleasant for donors, welcomed in the Parisian lair of major concerts and sporting events. Donors will be able to come from 2 pm to 7 pm and lie down in the large hall transformed into an ephemeral “donation house”. Note that the health pass is necessary to participate in this collection in a cultural place, unlike other donation sites. However, as everywhere, people who have presented symptoms of Covid must wait 14 days after these symptoms have disappeared to donate blood.
There is an urgent need to curb a situation "which poses a major risk to the care of patients and all those who need a transfusion."
The level of collection from blood collections must be regular and constant to ensure self-sufficiency, because the shelf life of blood products is limited ”, reminds the transfusion operator in France: 7 days for platelets, 42 days for red blood cells.