Urgent Need for Platelet Donations in Ávila: Don’t Let Summer Slow Down Donation Efforts

From the Hemotherapy and Hemodonation Centers and from the Brotherhood of Donors of Ávila itself, they do not want solidarity, now that summer has arrived, to fall into oblivion. It is not the first time that they have come to the fore to ask for a donation in recent weeks because there is a great need and not only for blood donations as such, but also for platelets and in his case it is very urgent. “Diseases – they always say – do not go on vacation” and the platelet deficit is especially significant, it is also a blood component with a very short expiration date and they need to be constant. The president of the Brotherhood of Donors of Ávila, Alejandro Reveriego, recalls that these last little more than a week in the best of cases and are required for the treatment of many diseases. We are talking about diseases of the immune system, severe infections, kidney failure, cancer or patients undergoing chemotherapy. So they asked for more donors because to get a bag of platelets you need five bags of blood. It is so and it is also a matter of 10 minutes to go to donate. There is no excuse.

Blood as such is always needed and there are also two groups that are needed more immediately, the A+ and the A- are short of reserves.

Due to donation opportunities it will not be and these can be done at the fixed point located in the Nuestra Señora de Sonsoles hospital whose hours are extensive: on Tuesdays and Thursdays you can go from 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and on Wednesdays between 10:30 a.m. and the 15. Knowing the existing need, how are they not going to go out with the donation bus through the city and the province or to convene collections in different clinics and health centers? In this month of July and since last Monday the 3rd they have begun with the collections: then they were in Casavieja, in the Medical Office; on the 7th, that is, this Friday they will go to the Burgohondo health center between 4:15 p.m. 8:45 p.m. and on the 10th they will also be in Tiñosillos at the Medical Office and at the same time as in Burgohondo. For the 14th the appointment is at the Fontiveros health center, also from 4:15 to 8:45 pm and on the 17th they will arrive at the La Adrada medical office with that schedule.

On Wednesday the 19th, the donation bus will be installed on the wooden bridge in the San José Obrero neighborhood where it will remain from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Facing Friday the 21st, the home of the retiree from Hoyos del Espino is the place chosen for the collective extraction from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The week of July 24 begins at the Arévalo Council House for another collection from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.; On the 26th they return with the donation bus, in this case to the Plaza del Rollo from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Last itinerant stop of the month, at the Las Navas health center on July 28 from 4 to 9 p.m. Sometimes it won’t be.

By the way, the president of the Brotherhood of Donors, Alejandro Reveriego, doesn’t hurt when it comes to recognizing that donations have been lost compared to the previous year at this time; nor that in the last month some ground has been recovered and that with the end of June we added around 2,500. If we continue like this we would touch 5,000 at the end of the year. Few considering that in 2022 there were 5,500. The goal? Being able to exceed 5,700 donations, but for that they must mobilize society and they want to do it with different campaigns such as the one launched in summer asking vacationers to fill their solidarity suitcase in the form of a donation, precisely because “diseases do not take vacations.” They have also launched a campaign to promote the fixed extraction point, but it is still too early to draw conclusions “although it is going well.”