VHS Group Project: Give Blood

Hi all,

Some of us are planning on donating blood on Friday evening. Me and @Lukeo and some others.

Other than just a Good Thing To Do, I think it’ll be really interesting to do! For example, I have no idea what my blood type is, or other basic personal stats.

I’ve never donated before due to job stuff, travel, or body mods. But for the first time in awhile, I have nothing disqualifying me!
Most reasonably healthy person should be eligible, see here for a quick list:

So post here if you’re interested and we can all meet up beforehand!

To book an appointment, go here and create an account. Then do a search and book at Oakridge, 6pm.

You’re done!

And remember to take the Skytrain - We’ll be going for a beer or two after, which’ll be considerably more powerful than usual.

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Just make sure you don’t have too many pints before you go to work up the
courage!

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I used to donate twice a year when they held dooner clinics at University.
But since then, dooner clinics always seem too far away.

I wonder do they ever have dooner clinics at skytrain stations or better in
the shopping malls at the skytrain?

The one downtown is not horribly far from the Waterfront station.

Where’s the one downtown? Only one I know of is the head office next to Children’s Hospital. I used to try to go there when I was in the area but their hours aren’t conducive to Night owls

Also remember you do get a free cookie when your done.

And juice…

Yep, I’m all booked in and ready to be bled.

Since we’re on the topic, just wanted to point out that this is in Canada

“HIV high-risk activities: a number of activities put people at high risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS. These can indefinitely defer a person from giving blood—for example, someone who has taken money or drugs for sex since 1977 cannot give blood; neither can someone who has used intravenous street drugs. Men who have had sex with another man more than one year ago, and who meet other screening criteria, now may be eligible to give blood. Learn more about our policy on HIV/AIDS risk-related activities.”

They recently changed SOME of this, but barely…

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This is true :disappointed:

One of Trudeau’s election promises was to get rid of this rule because it’s not the 1980s, and we know how HIV works now.

It looks like he reduced the waiting period from 5 years to 1 year, which is still ridiculous. The Health Minister says she intends to eliminate this entirely, but plans are pretty vague. This is worth a letter or phonecall to the local MLAs to stay on their case about it.

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Also interesting is checking Geographical deferral:

Because of the theoretical risk of variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vcJD), Health Canada has concluded that deferring donors who had spent a cumulative total of three months or more in the United Kingdom (U.K.) since 1980, or if they have spent a cumulative total of three months or more in France since 1980, or if they have spent a cumulative total of five years or more in Western Europe outside of the U.K. or France since 1980 through December 31, 2007, balances the safety of Canada’s blood supply with the need for donors.

“He” (ie Health Canada and Canada Blood Services) has reduced the deferral period from indefinite to 5 years to 1 year over a 3 year period. They are making steady progress, and seem to be basing their changes on actual research and risk analysis. I don’t think outrage is really necessary, steady, science-based progress is being made. They are investigating getting rid of these criteria entirely, and moving to a behavioural model for all patients, including MSM. Then people can be outraged about the personal questions they are asked instead…

Let’s not encourage the idea of making health safety decisions based on emotions or ideology. This is the same style of decision making we (well I, anyway) condemned the previous Government for. There has been huge progress on this in the past few years - we are now on track with other Western nations and the available data - but we don’t yet have good data on the safety of moving to a behavioural model and whether it would have a net positive effect on donation rates.

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