Climate crisis threatens medical blood supply in US amid extreme weather
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The climate crisis is threatening the medical blood supply in the US, with this summer's record heat contributing to an emergency blood shortage, the American Red Cross has warned.
As summers in the US get progressively hotter, blood drives across the country to persuade people to donate are facing challenges. In the month of July alone, when more than 130 million Americans were under heat advisory warnings, the American Red Cross said that turnout at almost 100 of its blood drives was affected by the weather.
Record heat in July and other extreme weather combined with typical seasonal obstacles, such as summer leisure travel, drove a shortfall of more than 19,000 blood donations across the country, the organization said. Its national blood inventory plummeted more than 25%, while hospital demand for lifesaving blood products has remained constant.
"That's a very fast drop in just about a month, and that limits our ability to meet hospital requests for blood," Rodney Wilson, the senior biomedical communications specialist for the American Red Cross, said. "So as hospitals request blood to treat patients, we've had to limit our distributions of some of those key types that they need the most, because there isn't enough for everybody."
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