American Red Cross urges blood donors amid second-ever national blood supply crisis

For the second time in its history, the American Red Cross has declared a national blood supply crisis. The first time this happened was in 2022, and Red Cross said blood donations have hit a four-year low.

Piedmont Rockdale Hospital in Conyers held a blood drive on Thursday where the blood shortage crisis was top of mind.

"Whenever there's a shortage of blood donations, we've experienced that in the past; we always worry about are we going to be able to do the life-saving things that we need to do?" asked Piedmont Rockdale Hospital CEO, Monica Hum.

While he didn't know about the drop in blood donations, Shelby Payne was at Piedmont Rockdale on Thursday to give blood anyway.    

"You can tell, just I mean they don't, they don't donate blood like they used to," Payne said.

He said his mother, who was a phlebotomist, instilled in him the importance of donating blood at a young age.

"She always talked about how much more good it does than people can actually — can care to actually understand and know," Payne said. "I mean ever since High School, I've tried to donate blood fairly regularly."

American Red Cross allows donors to track their blood so they can see where it ends up.

For Payne, seeing his blood help someone in real time is rewarding.

"It does do something to you internally that I would say you have to experience in order to actually understand it," Payne said.

During Thursday's blood drive, Piedmont Rockdale was able to collect 40 units — almost doubling the collection goal.

American Red Cross provides blood to several hospitals across Metro Atlanta, including Piedmont Rockdale.

"We have a lot of surgeries that come through here, both elective and emergent, and particularly in emergency situations, we need blood quite a bit," said Piedmont Rockdale gastroenterologist Ekinadese Aburime. "When there are delays from American Red Cross, again it delays the treatment."

While there's been a drop in donations, American Red Cross said there's also been a 4 percent increase in demand from hospitals.

"You've got people that are out on the road — you may have more accidents, trauma cases — so we've really seen a higher demand from our hospital partners, but blood donors, we need them to come out to meet that demand," said Greater Atlanta Red Cross' executive director Terri Badour. "And we think if we just had three more donors at every drive, we'd be able to solve this blood crisis."

There's a blood shortage, but Badour is confident donors will come together to be a part of the solution.