SAM COLBERT
The Silhouette (McMaster)

HAMILTON (CUP) ”“ Canada’s healthcare system is facing a shortage in donated blood supply, according to a recent study published by a McMaster University research team.

This problem threatens the future of many life-saving and life-prolonging medical procedures.

The potential shortage in blood donations is largely a result of Canada’s aging population. The age group most likely to give blood, 17 to 24, is becoming a smaller portion of the population, while the number of blood recipients is increasing.

“It will be a critical problem if we continue to see the same overall donation rates by population groups because there will be fewer donors and more users,” said Antonio Páez, an assistant professor in the McMaster department of geography and earth sciences, who was the lead researcher for the project.

“At this time we don’t have any substitutes for blood, so there is no synthetic blood that would be used, and there does not appear to be anything on the horizon that would become a good substitute for blood, so it still needs to be coming from human donors.”

Some potential donors are denied because of age, weight, medical conditions and places they have been to in the world. But of the eligible Canadian donor base, currently less than four per cent give blood. This number would have to increase in order to meet projected needs and a large part of that undertaking would involve encouraging the least donating demographic, the 25 to 54 age bracket, to increase its blood contribution.

Páez believes that it is not so much a matter of attitude that prevents this “workforce demographic,” as it is referred to, from donating, but a matter of time constraints and accessibility. While young people are more flexible in their schedules, the older population more commonly has commitments like full-time jobs and families. For these reasons, potential donors in the workforce are less willing to donate, he suspects. Also, blood drives at high schools and universities make donating more convenient for youth.

Research also showed that wealthy people are less likely to give blood, while highly-educated people, those in health-related occupations and those living in small cities or towns, do so more frequently. Immigrants, whether due to language, culture or other reasons, tend to donate proportionally less, further tilting the balance between donors and users of blood.

Another contributing factor named in the research is the general shrinking of family sizes. Over the last number of decades, parents are bearing fewer children due to possible concerns about the quality of living, social norms and, especially more recently, economic reasons.

In conducting research, Páez and his group found that the shifting demographics in Canada are similar to those of Germany. Like in Canada, projections show that Germany will experience shortfalls of blood over the next decade and the problem will only get worse.

“In Germany, I was surprised by the speed with which the process was happening,” said Páez. “So, going from a system operating at capacity to a system that is facing shortfalls could happen in a period of just a few years’ time.”

Although the problem Canada faces is not immediate, it could become very serious over the next five to 10 years.”

The study, published in the International Journal of Health Geographics, was funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada Blood Services and Environics Analytics.