After the start of blood donation, ‘18478 people’ participated for 2 weeks. The blood donation of Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which began with the goal of solving the blood shortage in Korea, has achieved an unprecedented miracle. This is more than 3 times the average daily use of blood in all medical institutions in Korea. This blood donation helped solve the national problem of blood supply and demand to the shortage that continued since the beginning of this year due to the spread of the new coronavirus infection(COVID-19). The amount of blood in Korea which had been held for only 3 days exceeded the appropriate amount for 5 days and soared to 5.9 days.
Can't get a blood transfusion with a blood donation card
Blood donation reduces due to a decline of population
[Cheonji Daily News=Reporter Bo-young Hong] ‘We are very short of blood donation due to COVID-19. Donating blood can save precious lives. Please make a reservation in advance and visit a nearby blood donation house or a blood donation cafe.’
It is a text message that arrived on November 26 last year from the Ministry of Health and Welfare to everyone who uses mobile phones. In addition, text messages are continuously sent to those who participated in blood donation even once, as ‘Emergency blood donation request·Absolute lack of blood.’
As blood stocks bottom out, there is also a ‘blood shortage emergency’ in which emergency patients can’t receive a blood transfusion. Under these conditions, even if you have 100 blood donation cards, you will not receive a blood transfusion. Donated blood is used for acute leukemia(42%), lymph and nonacute leukemia(15%), various cancers(13.5%), liver disease(9.5%), and surgical surgery(7.5%).
On 2nd, according to the Blood Management of Korean Red Cross, the lack of blood donation in Korea is becoming chronic due to the prolonged COVID-19 incident. Coronics can donate blood after 4 weeks of self-quarantine even if they want to donate blood. People can donate blood after 10 days of self-quarantine recently, so the number of blood donors increased, but it was difficult to resolve the blood shortage.
Although the number of patients who need a blood transfusion has soared due to a lack of blood, the blood donation rate has been steadily decreasing from 5.7% to 5.0% over the past 5 years since 2017.
In particular, from December last year when Omicron began in earnest to the last month, about 17 million confirmed cases occurred over the past 5 months, accelerating the lack of blood donation due to concerns over the spread of infection along with quarantine. In addition, due to the aging problem, most of the blood demand, over 50s increased and the population in their teens and 20s, who mainly donate blood decreased from 12.4 million in 2015 to 11.8 million in 2019 to 11.8 million in 2019.
The blood supply crisis stage is divided into ‘interest’ ‘caution’ ‘warning’ and ‘severe’. The level of interest is issued when there are signs of a lack of blood supply and less than 5 days of blood reserves, and the level of caution is issued when a partial lack of blood supply and less than 3 days of blood reserves. The warning stage is given when the partial lack of blood supply and blood reserves are less than 3 days, the serious stage is when the lack of blood supply is expanded, and the red blood cell product is less than 1 day.