“It's in you to give,” is the Canadian Blood Services ubiquitous tagline to encourage blood donation, but the aunt of a boy who is the poster child for the organization says it’s too hard to donate if you live in Squamish.
Kerri Gray has started a Change.org petition in the hopes of bringing a clinic to Squamish. She hopes to garner 1,000 signatures on her “Blood Donor Clinic Needed in Squamish” page in the hopes of convincing Canadian Blood Services that a clinic would be viable in the Sea to Sky Corridor.
“I tried to get them to come here about six years ago because my nephew had Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, a blood disorder,” Gray said. “But they wouldn’t come. They said it is not worth their time. They used to come to Squamish, but they are not doing it anymore.”
Her nephew, Nate Lupton, had to have blood transfusions daily until he received a bone marrow transplant, she said. Ironically, the boy is a poster child for Canadian Blood Services, and has had his image used in the organization’s material.
Gray said she knows of two children in Squamish currently battling cancer.
“There’s a lot of people here that want to donate,” Gray said, adding that it is too onerous for many people in Squamish to drive down to the city to donate and, after giving blood, driving all the way home could be dangerous.
Even if a mobile clinic could set up one day a month or one day every six months, at least corridor residents could donate when it came to town, Gray said.
A spokesperson for the Canadian Blood Services said a clinic in the corridor isn’t likely, because it isn’t cost effective.
“If we take drive time up there with a full clinic team… we are only going to get a few hours of collections in by the time we bring everybody up there, do set up and run a clinic and come back down,” said David Patterson, director of donor relations for the B.C. and Yukon region. He said the organization collects blood and distributes it nationally, not on a region-by-region bases.
“Our goal in British Columbia is to collect the units of blood for national demand as cost effectively as possible,” he said, adding that the organization has made effective use of public funds a priority to the point of shutting some clinics, such as in Prince George, because it wasn’t cost effective to keep them open.
Over the last few years the demand for blood has actually dropped in Canada, he said.
But he said it is possible that at some point it would be cost effective to operate in Squamish.
“It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t do it in the future because demand in Canada will change,” he said. “We never say never.”
Residents in the district have been one of the most active communities in terms of people calling the organization and asking for a clinic, according to Patterson.
“We love the enthusiasm,” he said.
