The Northern California Community Blood Bank’s mid-November decision to exclude females from donating plasma and platelets may have protected the safety of the blood supply, but approximately a third of the female donors of plasma and platelets have not stepped forward to donate whole blood.

“We work with a 10-day inventory,” Donor Resources Director John Gullam said of red blood. “When we get to the place where we’re starting to get concerned, we’ll let people know. We’re still a few days away from panicking.”

Gullam said getting the approximately 120 females who previously donated plasma and platelets back into the fold to donate whole blood is almost as much of a priority as attracting new donors to meet the community’s needs.

“Our male donors have really stepped up,” Gullam said. “We’ve been working our lists and we’re calling them incessantly. Some are coming in once a week. But we’re concerned about giving them some relief. We need more people in the pool.”

Gullam said shortages in certain types vary, with A+ and O+ being the desired donations as of Wednesday.

To convince those on the sideline to step into the blood donor pool, Gullam said, “Ask around. Most people know someone who has received blood or a relative who has received it. Sometime in your lifetime you will need blood products. It would be a shame if they were not there for you when you needed them.”

Gullam estimated 12,000 donors on record, but the 400 women who gave plasma and platelets prior to their exclusion gave more than 61 percent of the blood bank’s plasma and 30 percent of its platelets.

“Some of the women have said they didn’t think they could donate anything,” Gullam said. “The exclusion doesn’t apply to whole blood.”

Gullam said “few, a very few” people have become new donors since women were excluded in November. He puts recruitment at the top of the list prior to the advent of summer vacation schedules.

“We’re losing the baby boomers, due to various factors associated with age and becoming less eligible to give,” he said of the donor pool. “Generation X, their children, are smaller in numbers, but we need a higher percentage of them to donate to meet the need.

“The Y generation, the baby boomers’ grandchildren, are getting to an age where they’re eligible to donate in the next few years. They’re as big in numbers as the baby boomers. It’s a large, eligible pool. That’s why high school drives are so important.”

It’s also why the local blood bank has established a presence on MySpace.com and why it’s researching e-mail and text messaging as a way to contact the under-25 crowd.

“I saw recently where someone surveyed the 18 to 25-year-olds and did it all by cell phone because that’s where they get their calls,” Gullam said.

E-mail and cell phone calling to let donors know the blood bank is “low, very low or critically low” has not started, but Gullam said it’s not far off.

“It’s part of our focus on new donor recruitment,” he said. “That and letting women know they can give whole blood.”

Red blood cells can be donated every eight weeks or six times a year.

Plasma can be donated monthly.

Platelets can be offered weekly, but no more than 24 times in a year. They require 90 minutes to two hours to collect and are only good for five days.

“People always assume there’s a shortage of the rare types, but the percentage who need it is smaller, too,” Gullam said. “Usually, it’s the most common blood type that is most needed.”

An uncommon and previously undiagnosed condition associated with the antibodies found in 15 to 20 percent of females led to November’s exclusion of women from giving two of the three components collected by the blood bank.

According to the July 2006 issue of Blood Bulletin, transfusion-related acute lung injury occurs within the first six hours of transfusion. TRALI has been linked to an antibody in only 1 percent of males, but has been found in women who have been pregnant or had transfusions.

First described in 1985, it has emerged as the leading cause of transfusion mortality in the U.S. as other adverse reactions to transfusions have decreased with improved donor screening and blood product manufacturing.

There is no screen currently available to test for the antibody tied to TRALI. When the donated blood with the HLA antibody interacts with the cells of those receiving the donated transfusion, potentially fatal respiratory distress may result.

For more information or to become a donor, go to http://www.nccbb.org/ or phone 707-443-8004.