Sam Cliffe

Why?

It's 4% of eligible people.

So not everybody's eligible, obviously age limits and health limits, etc.

Because people's lives are busy and there's a hell of a lot of demands on everybody's time and their headspace.

It takes time out of your day.

A whole blood donation doesn't take as much time as a plasma donation.

But it's something you have to really think about.

It's not something that will just happen by osmosis.

You actually have to book an appointment, turn up.

Less so once you've been doing it a few times.

We haven't really got an upper age limit.

It really depends on your health.

After a certain age, we might ask you to have a medical assessment with one of our wonderful doctors who might say, yeah, you're good to go for another year or two.

But we keep a really close eye on things like your immunoglobulin levels, your protein levels.

We don't want to make people sick.

Does blood...

sort of degenerate over over time as you get older so your blood is good your whole life pretty good yes um as i say we don't i think people get very disappointed if they've been a regular blood donor for most of their adult life and then suddenly we say here you go you're 70 off you go yeah no we don't we we say look let's just make sure that you're healthy enough to continue to donate for you not for the blood quality

Why is it that the plasma donations are up, but then the whole blood donations down?

We collect whole blood to meet demand.

Now, whole blood is the stuff that only lasts for 35 days.