Local shortage affecting Kansas City’s ability to send blood to Florida hurricane zone

By Marleah Campbell

Click here for updates on this story

    KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KCTV) — Blood from Kansas City is on its way to Florida to help victims of Hurricane Ian, but the local shortage has affected how much we can help.

Now, Kansas City’s Community Blood Center is asking people to pitch in to replenish our local supply.

Florida put out a national request for help earlier this week. The Community Blood Center is one of the facilities that answered that call.

“Blood centers across the country mostly operate on a community basis – meaning that they’re collecting blood in their community and it’s staying in their community, and that’s how they’re getting by,” Chelsey Smith with the Community Blood Center said. “That’s how we operate here as well. The blood that we collect, for the most part, stays here. We’re only sending it elsewhere if we get those requests for help during these times of natural disaster.”

Kansas City is already facing a serious blood shortage. All types currently sit at a two- to three-day supply; they’d like to have it at a full week.

Smith says there was no hesitation to help – the question was how much they could send.

“Simply put, if we had a healthy and stable blood supply right now today, we could have sent a lot more,” Smith said .”But we don’t have a healthy and stable blood supply in Kansas City, and we haven’t for over two years now. And what that means is not only are we affected here locally, but our neighbors are affected as well because our ability to help them is inhibited.”

The CBC is part of the New York Blood Center Enterprise, which encompasses centers in 13 states. They didn’t have data on how much each specific center sent, but they’ve collectively met about 10-percent of Florida’s request so far.

Now, Smith says the Community Blood Center may need to send more depending on the need.

“When things like this happen – we saw it with Hurricane Harvey, we saw it with Hurricane Sandy – often times these blood centers are crippled in their ability to collect blood for weeks or even months,” Smith said .”So this could be a need coming out of Florida for quite some time. I would say that we, along with blood centers all across the country, are kind of on standby right now waiting to see just how bad it is and how much help Florida is going to need moving forward.”

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.