Dr. Mike Messiska hadn’t donated blood since high school when he donated on Wednesday.
The following Saturday, Messiska, medical director and chair of the department of emergency medicine at Riverside University Health System Medical Center in Moreno Valley, received a text from inland blood bank Lifestream informing her that her blood was saving a patient’s life at her hospital.
“I was out of football coaching at the time,” Messiska told Riverside County supervisors on Tuesday, January 25. “What a wonderful thing to know that your blood was able to help someone.”
It is a scene that has been repeatedly called the worst national blood shortage in a decade, which Messisca hopes to end. The shortage, which has worsened as the coronavirus pandemic leads to canceled blood drives and donor appointments, with hospitals scrambling inland Empire and urging the public to donate so patients don’t die.
On January 11, the American Red Cross announced its first blood crisis, warning that hospitals would limit blood delivery in recent weeks because some hospitals were not receiving one-quarter of their requested blood products.
Public relations specialist Dina Colunga said Lifestream only had a day’s supply of blood as of Friday, January 28.
“Less than two days are classified as critical,” Colunga said via email.
The Southern California Blood Bank, which serves Los Angeles, Orange, and southwest Riverside counties, has about a four-day supply of most blood types. “While we like to have a 7-day supply on hand,” spokeswoman Claudine Van Gonka said in an email.
“There’s a tremendous mismatch between the needs of our patients and the supplies we have,” he said Tuesday at the county-run hospital in Messika during an event to recognize National Blood Donor Month.
Messiska said the pandemic made things worse by shutting down blood drives on high schools and college campuses, which traditionally give a lot of donations.
“Schools have many other priorities right now. They are just trying to be open and keep their teachers in session,” he said. “And so we understand the hesitation, but we need to meet with community leaders and encourage them that it’s safe to have blood banks on their premises and run these charities.”
While Messisca said he is not aware of a patient dying of blood loss in his hospital, “we are not proud to say that there have been times, and in the past six to 12 months, where … All the blood … is posted at the bedside to be given to patients. So the next patient or any other patient in the building who needed blood would have been without that resource.”
Shane Reichardt, a spokesman for the county’s Department of Emergency Management, said the same is the case at other Riverside County hospitals served by the Red Cross and Lifestream.
The shortage also affects Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton. While the blood list at the San Bernardino County-run hospital is slowly recovering, the supply of universal blood types O-positive and O-negative is less than half of the normal list, spokesman Justin Rodriguez said via email.
In an emailed statement, Kaiser Permanente, which has hospitals in Riverside, Moreno Valley, Fontana and Ontario, said it is struggling with blood loss.
Kaiser is “addressing this shortcoming by relocating the blood supply to the facilities that need it most, thus helping to minimize the impact on our patients,” the statement read. “However, there is no doubt that more blood is needed.”
Messiska said the shortage has forced her hospital to postpone some surgeries, including organ donation. Joseph in Orange County, which postponed some non-emergency surgeries, and on January 12 the Harbor-UCLA Medical Trauma Center was closed for more than two hours because it didn’t have enough blood.
Getting enough blood was a problem even before the pandemic.
“Pre-Covid, we haven’t been able to supply our own patients through our own donations, which is dangerous,” said Messiska, who noted that 30% of Riverside County blood donations came from outside the county. Huh.
Messiska said public agencies such as law enforcement are stepping up to conduct blood campaigns. A Riverside County employee blood drive took place outside the county administrative center on Tuesday.
Among the donors was supervisor Jeff Hewitt, who called on more than 20,000 county employees and the public to “fix this bloodbath.”
After Messisca spoke, he said, “We’ve seen what happens when you have a water runoff.” “It takes nature and some luck for some atmospheric rivers to come up and dump it and get us out of that drought. The good part is that we don’t need nature to step in.”
how to donate
Here are phone numbers and websites for information and appointments.
Lifestream Blood Bank
1-800-GIVE TRY (879-4484), LStream.org
American Red Cross
1-800-Red Cross (1-800-733-2767), redcrossblood.org
Southern California Blood Bank
1-800-469-7322, scbloodbank.org
