Northern Alberta residents face barriers to blood donation despite urgent need

Canadian Blood Services says there is an urgent need for donations after winter storms cancelled blood drives nationwide. The non-profit says it especially needs donations from people with rare blood types.

Fort McMurray, Alta., resident Kristi Cyprien would love to contribute. She has an A-negative blood type, which is shared by only about six per cent of the Canadian population. 

But donating blood isn’t an option for residents in much of northern Alberta. Fort McMurray has not hosted a blood drive since 2002 and the last event in Grande Prairie, Alta., ran in 2011. Cyprien’s work and family schedules make it difficult to drive to Edmonton to donate, even during shortages.

“I feel like there’s a lot of people in this community that would donate if they could. They just can’t,” she said. “I feel like they’re doing an injustice by not including this community.”

Dr. Rithesh Ram, who is president of rural medicine for the Alberta Medical Association, plans to discuss the issue with Canadian Blood Services (CBS).

“If almost 50 per cent of the geography of the province doesn’t have the ability to donate any blood, that should probably be an area that someone should be looking at,” said Ram, who is also a family physician in Drumheller, Alta.

“There’s very few, if any, particular areas that’s considered rural in the U.S. that [don’t] have the ability to use some kind of collection within a 100-mile radius. Well, that’s definitely not the case in northern Alberta.”

Distance, shelf life challenges northern blood drives

Blood must be packaged quickly once drawn, and will eventually expire if not used. Alberta’s main blood donation sites are in Edmonton, Calgary and Red Deer.

Drives can be held in rural areas near cities, according to CBS. Mobile donor clinics have travelled in Alberta as far north as Westlock and Bonnyville. However, Fort McMurray and Grande Prairie are considered too remote for blood drives.

“Holding a donation event in a more remote location can impact our ability to ship the blood and blood products within the required timeframes to our manufacturing sites to ensure the donations are kept viable,” CBS said in a statement to CBC News.

The non-profit group still moves blood products from its national inventory across Canada. Ram said rural operating rooms, like the ones at Grande Prairie Regional Hospital and Fort McMurray’s Northern Lights Regional Health Centre, also have extra blood on standby.

He said he has not heard of any instances of rural medical care suffering because there were no local blood drives. Sometimes people must travel to larger centres for regular transfusions, although Ram said these transfusions may be part of complex procedures available only in cities.

“We always talk about the struggles that rural areas have had in all sorts of services… this is just one more thing that, ‘Hey, you also don’t have enough blood and you also can’t donate,’” said Ram.

Tany Yao, UCP MLA for Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo, said he raised this issue with CBS after hearing from residents like Cyprien. He joined local blood drives before they stopped and is disappointed they are no longer operating in Fort McMurray.

“I think Fort McMurray is a fantastic place with amazing people who are extremely generous, including with their body tissues,” he said. “It’s really good to see that people still have interest in donating blood, even locally here in Fort McMurray, and it’s a fantastic demonstration of passion and community.”