More blood donors needed to handle Canada-wide demand

"Canadian blood reserves are dipping to dangerous levels, say officials, and now they are scrambling to find ways to get back to a comfort zone. Ron Vezina, a spokesman for Canadian Blood Services, says some blood types are down to less than half the usual levels, despite a productive summer. 'Summer is typically a tough time to recruit blood donors . . . but we actually did fairly well, but in September and October, we couldn't keep up with the hospital demand,' Vezina said. 'If you have an imbalance of demand from the hospital and not enough supply, you dip into your reserves and you want to have four to six days of blood inventory running to sustain an interruption in service or natural disaster . . . but on some critical blood types, we're down to two days'" - Canada.com