National Blood Supply Shortage: An Urgent Call to Action for Healthcare Professionals
Brent Lee, MD, MPH, FASA, Director of Clinical Excellence and Performance Improvement, North American Partners in Anesthesia
Every two seconds, a patient in the United States requires a blood transfusion.1 Whether for cancer treatments, surgeries, chronic illnesses, or traumatic injuries, 42,000 units of red blood cells, platelets, and plasma are required each day.1
As recently as August 2024, the American Hospital Association issued a Special Bulletin highlighting the nation’s critically low blood supply.2 This appeal echoed warnings issued by the American Red Cross, America’s Blood Centers, and the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Blood Therapies (AABB), highlighting how the national blood inventory was greatly impacted by severe weather, including the summer’s intense heat and a tropical storm causing floods, power outages, and travel hazards, as well as a cyberattack on a multistate blood supplier.
Unfortunately, this shortage is not an isolated event. As demonstrated by the AABB’s weekly blood supply report (see figure below), the supply of O-type positive and negative blood has been consistently below the optimal supply level since 2017 and has drifted into critically low levels every year since 2019.3 If handling day-to-day needs is challenging with the current low blood supply, a mass casualty incident from any cause—natural disaster or human action—could create an especially difficult situation due to the large amounts of blood required in a sudden-onset emergency.
Read more in Dr. Lee’s article featured in The Doctor’s Advocate:
https://www.thedoctors.com/the-doctors-advocate/second-quarter-2025/national-blood-supply-shortage-an-urgent-call-to-action-for-healthcare-professionals/