Follow the blood bag: How Australian Red Cross processes life-saving donations

Updated

A little bit of blood goes a very long way.

Nestled among warehouses and coffee shops in the inner-city suburb of West Melbourne is a processing plant dedicated to blood.

The Australian Red Cross facility houses plastic packets and glass vials of blood, plasma and platelets donated by people across the country.

These donations come a long way to get to the plant and have to go through a lot more before they can end up saving lives.

The Australian Red Cross needs around 25,000 individual blood donations every week to meet patient needs.

One in 30 Australians give blood every year, but the charity's regional communications manager Erin Lagoudakis said it was always looking for more donors, especially before Easter.

Most people are able to donate blood — as long as they are fit and healthy, aged between 16 and 70, and weigh more than 50 kilograms.

Donating blood is a relatively simple process.

After you fill out a questionnaire at a temporary or permanent donation facility, you are seen by a nurse to donate, which takes 10 minutes.

Afterwards, you get a feed at the canteen and your blood donation is ready to go off on its life-saving journey.

Once your blood is donated, it is packaged up and sent to one of four Australian Red Cross processing plants in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.

The first thing that happens at a processing plant is the blood is unpacked and checked.

It is important the unpackers are gentle in their approach.

"We want to protect the precious cargo inside," Ms Lagoudakis said.

Once unpacked, every donation is logged into a computer system.

Depending on how the donor answered their questionnaire, it will be determined what kind of products the blood can be turned into.

Every donation is weighed and put on the shelves to be tested for various things — HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, syphilis and, of course, blood type.

Every donation is then centrifuged, which separates the whole blood donations into three components: red cells, platelets and plasma.

To do this, each blood donation is shaken, placed into an orange canister and spun in a machine at 4,200 revs per minute.

The blood donations split apart after they go through that sort of workout, Ms Lagoudakis said.

"Blood is like a salad dressing — it just naturally separates," she said.

"The centrifuge just helps the process."

After being in the centrifuge, the blood bag goes onto a machine that helps further press and separate the donation into its three components.

"From this point in time, the blood will go on three different journeys and can potentially go to three different patients," Ms Lagoudakis said.

The red cells naturally pool at the bottom of the donation bag and are the product you usually see in hospitals.

The platelets get pooled with four other donations of the same blood group, and then this mixture goes into another centrifuge.

Unlike blood, the platelets are stored on room-temperature-controlled moving shelves to prevent clotting.

The final component is yellow liquid plasma, which is snap frozen.

Once all donations are given a good bill of health, they are sent off to the facility's blood bank holding area.

Phone orders come into the blood bank's mini call centre and the staff there essentially go shopping in the fridges and freezers for what product is needed.

The order is then packaged up and sent by courier to hospitals or other medical facilities.

"The blood from [Melbourne] can go anywhere in Australia," Ms Lagoudakis said.

"If there's a particular patient match somewhere, and we've got the blood the patient needs, then we'll send it there."

So who gets these three types of life savers?

Cancer patients are the main users of platelets, while people with burns and immune deficiencies often need plasma.

Red blood cells can go to all sorts of patients — often trauma patients who have lost a lot of blood or women experiencing birthing complications.

"Working at the blood service, we get to see the best of humanity," Ms Lagoudakis said.

"We'd love to have more people getting involved at critical times over Easter."

To give blood, call the Australian Red Cross Blood Service on 13 14 95 or visit www.donateblood.com.au.

Topics: blood, charities, human-interest, darwin-0800, australia

First posted