Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2011 | Page 112

FASHION HEALTH & BEAUTY

The age range for a donor is from 17
up to 70, provided you have already
given blood, or up to a 66th birthday
if it is for the first time. Donors
normally give blood three times a
year, because everyone needs a period
of time to recover from giving one
unit – about one pint. To help the
smooth flow of the procedure a lot of
the donors go to sessions which are
structured to be in their particular area
three times a year.
Andy works with the pathology
laboratory at St Mary’s, and as
such goes round training people in
transfusion practice, including nurses
and doctors and making sure they are
aware of all the regulations that govern
transfusions; even down to things that
could go wrong.
“Basically, it is as matter of making
sure blood is safe and everyone is
following the right procedures,”

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he said. “I also work with the
haematology consultants, the blood
transfusion laboratory and the ward
staff giving advice and ensuring that
blood is given safely.”
Andy, who was born and brought up
in Brighstone, and worked at hospitals
all over the world while serving in the
Navy for 22 years, before returning to
the Island. He said: “The Island has
a National Blood Transfusion Service
team which operates here three times
a fortnight in various places, including
in Newport once a month.
“When anyone goes to a session
they provide 470 millilitres of blood
that can be split down into red
cells, platelets – part of the clotting
mechanism – and plasma, which
is frozen, and is used in clotting if
a patient has a major bleed. So all
blood that is generally given is split
into different components rather

than stay as one unit. However, it
is predominantly the collection of
red cells that we carry out on the
Island, so all of our donors are red cell
donors.”
So if someone meets all the
requirements, and decides they want
to donate blood how do they go about
it?
Andy continued: “Prospecti