THE IRISH BLOOD Transfusion Service (IBTS) has issued an urgent appeal for blood donations, with concerns around a lack of supply ahead of the June bank holiday weekend.

It is seeking an additional 2,000 donations over the next five weeks and is particularly appealing for new donors to make an appointment at their nearest clinic.

Director of operations Paul McKinney said the IBTS is “very concerned” ahead of the bank holiday weekend, with supply across all blood groups having fallen to three days. 

“That’s worrying because they’re never really spread like that. We like to have seven days. We’re very challenged with the bank holiday coming up next week,” he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme.

He said the service is currently at a “pre-Amber” alert stage.

“When we get to three days supply, we issue a pre-Amber warning to the hospitals which is to inform them that our stocks are short, we are taking action to try and correct that and we ask them to reduce their stock holding where we can and we work with them in terms of the units will be issued to them.

“Hence, we take actions such as asking or launching a national appeal to avoid going to the next step, which is an Amber Alert. We’ve never had to do it in Ireland before. An Amber Alert is a situation where hospitals are asked to consider what elective surgeries they can actually manage not to do or postpone until we get the stock levels back to where they need to be.”

McKinney said the number of new donors has fallen significantly since the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We currently have an active donor base of around 85,000. Pre-Covid, we were getting around 17,500 to 18,000 new donors. We’ve dropped significantly, we’re about half that at the moment, so we have work to do to try and encourage new donors to come back and refresh the panel.”

He also said that hospital demand is very high at the moment, adding that for the first quarter of this year, the IBTS issued more red cells and platelets than it has for the last 10 years.

McKinney said supply across all blood groups is low, and appealed for all blood group donors to make an appointment.

Information on how to donate blood can be found at www.giveblood.ie.