Shropshire Star comment: Bad idea to annoy the blood donors
When it was announced a few months ago that blood donation sessions in various Shropshire places were being cut because of a fall in demand for blood, there will have been some people who thought to themselves... just you wait.
Because the moment you give the impression that you do not need the help of volunteers, you store up the prospect that those volunteers will get the message.
So they no longer come forward, with the upshot that blood supplies fall.
They could fall to a level which is just the right amount of just the right mix of blood types. No harm done, a perfect balance between supply and demand.
Or they could fall to a level which is no longer enough, or no longer the right mix of types. And then you are going to need those volunteers again.
The trouble with that is once you have de-volunteered somebody, re-volunteering them is not a given, and the "we've got plenty of blood" impression is not the rallying call which is going to motivate new people to donate their blood.
And it turns out that there is a still a need for nearly 200,000 new donors a year.
There is, then, scope for confusion in the public's mind. When it comes to giving blood, for many volunteers it is a "thanks, but no thanks" parting which breaks a habit and may also break their will into the bargain. Human beings are emotional creatures and they like to be wanted.
In addition to this is the purely practical business of getting along to donation sessions. When those sessions have been cut, going along becomes more problematic.
Andrew Rodgers, of Oswestry, has given blood 916 times.
"I am doing this for the greater good, but it is becoming harder and harder to actually give blood," he says.
It is regular contributors like Andrew who are in more ways than one the lifeblood of the whole donation operation.
You can understand the reasoning that there is no point in collecting blood which will be wasted.
There again, while there is an army of willing blood donors like Andrew, the blood service has a strategic reserve on which it can call.
Stand down that army, and it risks losing its ability to respond rapidly to changing circumstances - and who can tell what the future may hold?
The blood service needs to tread carefully in managing this issue as it surely cannot be in the interests of anybody to upset the blood donation volunteers, those selfless community heroes on whom it has relied so much.
