My years of blood donation posts have done some good

I have been a blood donor since I turned 16. I had a gap of about eight years when I was often in malaria areas with adventure races, which is cause for deferral. I regained my regular donor status in 2008 and have retained it since.

I usually post here and on Facebook after donations, encouraging friends and readers to only donate if they intend to go back again at least three times within a year. The reason for this, in South Africa at least, is that your plasma (the other components are discarded) is quarantined after your first donation if it passes various tests - like for HIV and hepatitis. When you return and the tests on your second donation are clear, the plasma from the first donation is used and the second is quarantined. The same happens when you return a 3rd time.

It is only after you are clear of various transmissible diseases three times within a 12-month period (you can donate up to six times a year, every 56 days) that your red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and plasma are used.

As such, once-off donations are a waste of time, resources, labour, testing, freezer space, money, and blood because your donation will be discarded after a year if you do not return. The marketing around blood donation always says that each donation saves three lives. It only serves this purpose if you donate regularly so that all of your blood components are used.

I went to donate yesterday.

Watching Olympics at the George Western Cape Blood Service branch. My timing wasn't great as I got powerlifting instead of something like athletics, but it was interesting to see. 

My oldest friend David - we met at nursery school when I was 2 and he was 3 - responded with this:

"You’ve successfully persuaded me (after 20 years of making these valuable posts) to try again in the UK - they didn’t want it when I first moved here but this time they did - been used at Charing Cross hospital already. Just saying so you know your adverts work."

He is booked for his next donation in three-months time.