- January 11, 2025
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When Amelia Jackson, a marketing assistant at SunCoast Blood Centers, walks into the lab at work and sees the pouches of blood through the glass door of the cooler, she sometimes wonders if one of those donations will be streaming through her veins soon.
Jackson has only worked at the nonprofit for a year, but she and her brother Alexander have been receiving blood transfusions since birth. Jackson is 21 years old, and her brother is 19. The siblings were born with hereditary spherocytosis.
“Basically, our bodies can’t make healthy red blood cells,” Jackson said. “They come out sphere-shaped and can’t fit through the pathways, so we have to get donated blood once a month.”
Jackson needs two units of blood each month, or about two pints. Toward the end of the month, she can start to feel tired and sluggish. On a bad month, she might faint. But without transfusions, her condition is fatal.
In August, Jackson was only able to receive one unit of blood at her monthly appointment because of an areawide shortage. She had to wait a week and half to get the second pint.
Just five months later, SunCoast is facing yet another shortage.
“Holidays are the worst,” Director of Marketing and Communications Brian Dryfhout said. “We don’t have high school blood drives because the schools are out for two weeks.”
On top of that, many regular donors are traveling.
In January 2024, the Red Cross reported a shortfall of 7,000 units of blood between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The organization declared an emergency blood shortage and stated that the number of blood donors had dropped by about 40% over the past 20 years.
Because of shortages, blood donations are being incentivized more and more.
Between blood, plasma and platelets, a donor can receive up to $3,200 in gift cards per year from SunCoast. Retailers range from Amazon to Southwest Airlines.
The nonprofit, which will celebrate 76 years on Valentine's Day, also kicked off a “New Year, New You” campaign for the month of January.
Incentives include buy-one-get-one-free smoothies at Tropical Smoothie Cafe locations from North Port to University Town Center. And donors can receive Botox vouchers in Port Charlotte or St. Petersburg, where two med spas donated their services.
However, what donors get is not nearly as impactful as what they give. According to Blood Centers of America, one donor can save 18 lives per year.
SunCoast Blood Centers has five brick and mortar locations in Lakewood Ranch, Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice and Port Charlotte. The nonprofit also has eight buses. There are usually five on the road per day for blood drives.
Just one high school blood drive brings in an average of 175 donations, which equates to at least 525 lives saved. Teenagers can donate blood at 16 years old with parental consent. At 17, they can donate on their own.
“We need the younger generations,” Dryfhoust said. “Help out. Let’s start that trend. My (17-year-old) daughter is doing it. She said she’ll give blood the rest of her life because she understands what it does.”
The Red Cross reports that someone in the United States needs blood and or platelets every two seconds. Blood donations have a shelf life, so it can be difficult to keep up with the demand.
Plasma can be frozen up to a year. But platelets are only good for five days, one of which is spent on testing. Red cells can be stored between 2 and 6 degrees celsius for up to 42 days.
The majority of donations SunCoast collects stay within the local area where they were collected. The nonprofit serves local hospitals, such as Lakewood Ranch Medical Center, and is branching out to mobile emergency services.
“We supply O positive blood to the Sarasota Fire Department now,” Dryfhoust said. “When patients need to be medically evacuated, they put the O positive in them just to keep them alive.”
The only exception to donations staying local is in the case of national emergencies. SunCoast Blood Centers is part of the Blood Emergency Readiness Corp, which is a coalition of blood centers that work together to supply blood during “mass transfusion disasters.”
Considering the local shortage, Dryfhoust said it was lucky the nonprofit was on call the week before New Year’s Day because BERC sent out a request to the on-call blood centers after a man drove his pickup truck through a crowd on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street.
Dryfhoust suspects citizens nearby the incident helped stock the local blood banks, too.
“People don’t know how else to help,” Dryfhoust said. “They can donate blood. I wasn’t here then, but I was told we had people lined up out the door after the Pulse nightclub shooting.”
Locally, Dryfhoust believes a common misconception is that the donations are mainly serving the elderly population. A lot of donations are given to babies in the area’s Neonatal Intensive Care Units. And platelets, especially, are given to cancer patients of all ages.
“Donating blood products is a really easy way to help the people in your community and even help people you know,” Jackson said.
