Deployments add to need
for Tripler blood donors

Tripler Army Medical Center's Blood Donor Center is faced with an increased demand for blood donations and a smaller donor pool.

In an awareness campaign to increase donors, the center points out that more than 43 percent of career military personnel cannot donate blood now.

Besides those deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, military personnel stationed in Europe in the 1980s and early 1990s are ineligible as donors because of the possibility of transmitting a variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob (mad cow) disease, Tripler said.

Capt. Michael Bukovitz, the Blood Donor Center's director, said, "We highly encourage service members, retirees, military family members and Department of Defense civilian employees to donate, and to donate more often."

He said demands are high because medical advances have increased the kinds and frequency of lifesaving procedures.

Tripler is one of 24 centers in the Armed Services Blood Program, which is strained by military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Military members wounded and injured in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan receive about 355 units of blood a week from the program.

The Armed Services have relied since the Vietnam War only on the Armed Services Blood program to meet blood needs, the donor center said.

Tripler cannot rely on military blood donation centers on the mainland to make up shortages because blood is perishable and they are too far away. Nor does it rely on the Blood Bank of Hawaii.

Major contributors to the Tripler Blood Donor Center represent all services: the Army, 39 percent; Navy, 27 percent; Air Force, 22 percent; Marine Corps, 8 percent; and Coast Guard, 4 percent.

Blood is needed for trauma victims, leukemia patients and premature infants, the donor center said.

The center is located on the second floor of Tripler, A Wing, Room 2A207, and is open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Call 433-6195 for more information about how to donate or for locations and times at other military installations on Oahu; or visit www.tamc.amedd.army.mil and click on "Blood Donor Center."