It’s National Blood Donor Week, and Canadian Blood Services (CBS) says there’s always a need for more donors.
According to CBS, roughly half of Canada’s population is eligible to donate blood, but only one-in-81 people actually do.
For Winnipeg cancer survivor Ryder Robinson who is just a few days away from turning 12, blood donations were a literal lifesaver.
Ryder’s mom, Christine Guyader, told Global Winnipeg he was diagnosed with leukemia when he was only eight months old, and blood transfusions were a regular part of his 10 months of chemotherapy as an infant.
When he was two-and-a-half, the cancer returned, and the final blood product he needed was a bone marrow transplant.
“He received his bone marrow transplant nine-and-a-half years ago,” Guyader said, “so we’re coming up to our magic ten-year anniversary. Without Canadian Blood Services… I don’t know that he would be here, so they’re pretty special to us.”
Nearly a decade later, Ryder is an active pre-teen who loves playing hockey and picks up golf and dirt biking in the off-season.
Success stories like Ryder’s, the CBS’s Rayna Porter says, are the reason she loves her job, and the reason why generous blood donors continue to give.
“I have one of the best jobs, because all I do is interact with people that want an opportunity to give back to their community — want to engage with other people,” Porter said.
“Maybe you don’t have the financial means right now to give back in charity. Maybe you don’t have a lot of time to give back. What you maybe have is an hour. We’ll take that hour.”
The demand, Porter said, never stops, with someone in Canada needing blood every 60 seconds on average.
Here in Manitoba, in order to keep the blood system sustainable, around 3,500 new donors are needed each year — with summer being a particularly difficult time for CBS.
“It can be challenging to get people in the door in the summer. Especially because so many people are doing the due diligence of coming through the rest of the year,” she said.
“But blood expires. Blood is not shelf-stable. So we constantly need for people to come in the door and make that donation.”
Winnipeg firefighter Lt. Murray Davidson told Global Winnipeg he donates as often as he can, as he’s seen the need first-hand as an emergency responder.
“I got to see, daily, the need for it,” Davidson said. “Just knowing how simple a thing it is… (it’s) so easy to come in, walk in. Someone’s going to take care of it, and you’re going to give something that actually will save someone’s life.”
– With files from Marissa Turton