June 8, 2025 • 11 mins
Kerre Woodham talks to NZ Blood Service CEO Sam Cliffe at the start of National Blood Donor week.
NZ Blood is asking Kiwi's to find their superpower and start saving lives by becoming a blood or plasma donor.
COVID's impact on the methods of recruiting young blood donors has led to a decrease in the number of young people donating blood.
Since 2020, there has been a 25% decrease in the numbers of 16-25 year olds and the current average age of donors is 43, with 18% over 60.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Kerrywood And Morning's podcast from News
Talks headb Now.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
As you heard in the news headlines, this week is
National Blood Donor Week. New Zealand Blood is asking keywis
to find their superpower and start saving lives by becoming
a blood or plasma donor. COVID's had a massive impact
on their regular, reliable methods of recruiting youth donors. Since
twenty twenty, there's been a twenty five percent decrease in
(00:33):
the numbers of sixteen to twenty five year olds. The
current age of donors is forty three. Eighteen percent of
those are over sixty. New Zealand Blood Server CEO Sam
Cliff joins me. Now, very good morning to you.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Good morning, Kelly.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Why did COVID have an impact? Was it because you
couldn't go into schools predominantly?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yes, we've essentially lost to cohort our schools. High schools
and universities are our favorite recruiting ground for young young
people and that donation history. A lot of young people
start their donation journey at school, at high school. Quite
a lot of your listeners, I'm sure will resonate with
that or at university, and once you've got into the habit,
it becomes something that you do on a more regularly basis.
(01:17):
But we essentially lost two three years when we weren't
able to comment to those schools, not the forth of
the schools or the universities at all, and therefore we
just weren't able to recruit that cohort. We know from
our research that young people want to donate, that they're
not anti donation at all, but we just need the
hook to say, come on, get back, get back into
the spring of it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, it is a habit. I remember when my daughter
was going to school and I'd go to pick her
up and the blood service was just down the road,
so I'd go half an hour early and once a
month I'd donate blood and then go and pick her up,
and it just became a habit. And then once you
leave school, I got out of that habit.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, it is a habit. And we think this is
a very healthy habit and it's bond that's obviously good
for your fellow kiwis. And you know, we have so
many stories many people who are alive, are saved and enhanced,
certainly made livable by the use of our products. We
don't recruit plasma donors in schools. We just whole blood donors,
(02:17):
just the normal stuff that people recognize, the red stuff.
But we strongly encourage people, if they've been a blood
donor in the past, to think about, actually, I wonder
if I could do plasma. Do I have enough time
to actually donate to plasma? And you can do that
much more often as well than donating whole blood. Yes, yes,
because when we do the plasma donation, we take the
(02:37):
plasma out, but we give you your red cells back,
so we don't run the risk of anemia and the
tiredness and fatigue you'd get if you donated whole blood
too often. So yeah, you can donate plasma much more often.
With whole blood. It's only three to four times a year.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So if the young ones and averse to donating blood
or plasma, have you tried different ways of reaching them? Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yes we have. I mean we're all over the platforms
that we believe and I'm not of a generation necessarily
users and myself, but certainly using all the platforms that
we have at our disposal, and we get some very
good feedback from that. I don't think they're certainly not
a verse. I think it's an awareness, which is why,
you know, being able to speak to people on programs
like this one, thank you for that is so great.
(03:25):
There the more people we can get to to say, actually,
if you've got somebody you know in your family of
that sort of age group, and perhaps you're not a
doning yourself, why don't you say here, come on, let's
do it together. We know lives are busy, We completely
understand that, which is why we try to get around
the country to as many mobiles as we can, which
we go to about three hundred and fifty unique venues
up and down the country. But we've also got eleven
(03:45):
six sites, you know, sort of four of which are
in Auckland, which is obviously the biggest population. So we
try and make it as easy as possible. We've got
quite you know, quite flexible opening hours now from early
in the morning to quite late in the evenings and
quite a lot of the time on a Saturday in
the main sens trying to make it as easy as
possible for people to enroll up theirs, these superheroes.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
When it comes to excuse me, when it comes to
being able to give like you've relaxed the criteria around
people who are living in the UK and around gay men.
What is there any somebody was saying, Oh, I give
blood regularly, but I've been on antibiotics so often I
(04:29):
can't donate blood because of the antibiodocks. Is that true?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
There are some medications that would preclude you and probably
would mean that we'd defer you for a period of time.
Most people, of course of antibiotics, you know, sort of
it might be a small weight, but really it's only
to ensure that you're better. We don't want to hurt
our donuts. There are a few medical conditions which would
also preclude you from donating. But if people wanted to
find that out and have a chat before they made
(04:53):
us go through the haffle of making an appointment and
coming in, we give it a call. We've got a
wonderful team of nurses who can talk to you through
all of those things. Just to be really clear. While
we've lifted the restriction and on people from the UK,
France and Ireland, we did that February last year, we
haven't quite lifted the restriction on men who have sex
(05:13):
with men yet. We're working on it and We've got
approval from the regulator to lift that, but it means
we need to update and upgrade some of our testing platforms,
which we are doing the process of doing. Hopefully by
end of this year or possibly early next year, we'll
be able to lift those restrictions, which will be fabulous.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Who needs blood?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Lots of people. We collect about five about five thousand
donations a week and it all goes We waste virtually nothing.
The biggest, the biggest chunk goes to people with cancer,
So the biggest proportion of our donations go to people
with cancer, followed by people with emergency surgeries and massive
(05:54):
blood loss trauma, etc. That's four percent. It goes to
pregnancy and child birth and also to children, and then
a lot of our plasma products know to people were
fairly chronic, long term, very disabling conditions like immuno deficiency disorders,
(06:14):
which makes essentially people don't have enough of their antibodies,
so they need the plasma to replace their antibodies otherwise
they are permanently, permanently sick and pretty sick, very sick.
So yes, it's a huge range, but about a quarter
is for treatment of cancer.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Okay, just a couple of questions from listeners, why don't
we buy blood in plasma?
Speaker 3 (06:39):
We don't need to buy any of the fresh stuff,
the red stuff. We are self sufficient for that, and
long may it continue, because we couldn't buy it even
if we wanted to. Where would we get it from.
This is a very limited shelf life product. You know,
it's under forty days. So even if there was already
supply in Australia, for example, which there isn't, they have
(07:00):
the same challenges that we do. We couldn't buy it.
What we do do, though, for plasma is top up
the plasma collections that we get here by buying commercial products,
as we call it, which is product made from plasma
collected predominantly in America, as collected by commercial plasma collections
(07:20):
who pay donors to collect their plasma.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That was the second one. Why don't we pay donors?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
It's an interesting question and one that I get asked
a lot. The World Health Organization's gold standards for blood
donation is voluntary and it's non realinerated. You don't get paid.
You do it because you're an ultraistic donor who wants
to give something back to their community, into their country
and to the population in which they live. Our research
(07:50):
would tell us that people don't want to be paid.
And I'm not saying that would be absolutely everybody. I
mean a lot of people might say, hey, this would
be great, But you run quite quickly into kind of
ethical dilemmas when you start paying people for something that's
a prospect of human origin. Run into the issues that
are fairly well canvas and well known around the globe
(08:11):
for commercial plasma, where people are encouraged to donate very often,
which we believe is not a good thing for the
person's health. We want to keep our donors healthy and well.
But if you are being paid and it becomes quite
a large part of your ecome, it's I think it's
quite an easy step to step into. That's actually something
that we wouldn't want to be going down. So ethical dilemmas, yes,
(08:34):
but also there be is huge upfront financial cost to
do that. If you paid. If we have about one
hundred and twenty thousand regular donors we're collecting, if thousands
of donations a week, you can do the mass and say, well,
if we paid them fifty seventy five one hundred dollars each,
it then mounts up to being a very very expensive
(08:56):
way of encouraging donations. Our preference always and the same
with pretty well levery blood service that we compare ourselves with,
is it's much better to keep it really clean and
people donate because they want.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
To, yeah, not because they have to. When it comes
to people on blood thinners, can they give blood or plasma?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
It will depend on why and what for? Probably not,
But I'm not a doctor. I would pass on to
one of our wonderful team of doctors. No, probably not,
because obviously if you're on blood thinners, on warfarin or heparin,
then you're likely to bleed more and we don't really
necessarily want you to do that.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
No, that's very true, And I had a stint put
an over fifteen years ago. Would I be allowed to
give blood?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
That would be one of those case by case basis
where I encourage you to speak to one of our doctors.
If you're really fit, really healthy, really well, highly likely
that that would be the case that you could donate.
It would depend on page, and it would depend on
what other medications you may or may not be taken now,
So that would be one that I would encourage somebody
to wring and say, this is my medical history, talk
(10:06):
it through and then one of our doctors can give
you an opinion either way.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Okay. And is there an age limit.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
For a new donor. Yes, we would like our donors
to start donating, preferably before before they've turned seventy. But again,
we don't stop people donating at a certain age. If
you are healthy, fit well and want to continue, and
our doctors say, yep, look you've fitten healthy and well
and this is great that you want to donate. We
(10:33):
don't cut people off at at an uper age limit.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Brilliant, same, thank you. So you'd like people to get along.
There's a there's a very good app I used to
have on my phone which.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Donate, the Blood Service app. It does some neat things
including when you've when your blood being used, you'll get
a text message. I really love that feature myself. I
thought I've worked here for a long time because you
can be doing anything you've been listed market, you know,
watching the floor, and suddenly you get a text message
that says, hey, your bloods being used to help save
a life today. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That's pretty cool, indeed, Sam, thank you so much. Sam Cliff,
New Zealand Blood Service CEOs.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, Listen live to
news Talks it Be from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Kerrywood And Morning's podcast from News
Talks headb Now.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
As you heard in the news headlines, this week is
National Blood Donor Week. New Zealand Blood is asking keywis
to find their superpower and start saving lives by becoming
a blood or plasma donor. COVID's had a massive impact
on their regular, reliable methods of recruiting youth donors. Since
twenty twenty, there's been a twenty five percent decrease in
(00:33):
the numbers of sixteen to twenty five year olds. The
current age of donors is forty three. Eighteen percent of
those are over sixty. New Zealand Blood Server CEO Sam
Cliff joins me. Now, very good morning to you.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Good morning, Kelly.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Why did COVID have an impact? Was it because you
couldn't go into schools predominantly?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yes, we've essentially lost to cohort our schools. High schools
and universities are our favorite recruiting ground for young young
people and that donation history. A lot of young people
start their donation journey at school, at high school. Quite
a lot of your listeners, I'm sure will resonate with
that or at university, and once you've got into the habit,
it becomes something that you do on a more regularly basis.
(01:17):
But we essentially lost two three years when we weren't
able to comment to those schools, not the forth of
the schools or the universities at all, and therefore we
just weren't able to recruit that cohort. We know from
our research that young people want to donate, that they're
not anti donation at all, but we just need the
hook to say, come on, get back, get back into
the spring of it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, it is a habit. I remember when my daughter
was going to school and I'd go to pick her
up and the blood service was just down the road,
so I'd go half an hour early and once a
month I'd donate blood and then go and pick her up,
and it just became a habit. And then once you
leave school, I got out of that habit.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, it is a habit. And we think this is
a very healthy habit and it's bond that's obviously good
for your fellow kiwis. And you know, we have so
many stories many people who are alive, are saved and enhanced,
certainly made livable by the use of our products. We
don't recruit plasma donors in schools. We just whole blood donors,
(02:17):
just the normal stuff that people recognize, the red stuff.
But we strongly encourage people, if they've been a blood
donor in the past, to think about, actually, I wonder
if I could do plasma. Do I have enough time
to actually donate to plasma? And you can do that
much more often as well than donating whole blood. Yes, yes,
because when we do the plasma donation, we take the
(02:37):
plasma out, but we give you your red cells back,
so we don't run the risk of anemia and the
tiredness and fatigue you'd get if you donated whole blood
too often. So yeah, you can donate plasma much more often.
With whole blood. It's only three to four times a year.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So if the young ones and averse to donating blood
or plasma, have you tried different ways of reaching them? Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yes we have. I mean we're all over the platforms
that we believe and I'm not of a generation necessarily
users and myself, but certainly using all the platforms that
we have at our disposal, and we get some very
good feedback from that. I don't think they're certainly not
a verse. I think it's an awareness, which is why,
you know, being able to speak to people on programs
like this one, thank you for that is so great.
(03:25):
There the more people we can get to to say, actually,
if you've got somebody you know in your family of
that sort of age group, and perhaps you're not a
doning yourself, why don't you say here, come on, let's
do it together. We know lives are busy, We completely
understand that, which is why we try to get around
the country to as many mobiles as we can, which
we go to about three hundred and fifty unique venues
up and down the country. But we've also got eleven
(03:45):
six sites, you know, sort of four of which are
in Auckland, which is obviously the biggest population. So we
try and make it as easy as possible. We've got
quite you know, quite flexible opening hours now from early
in the morning to quite late in the evenings and
quite a lot of the time on a Saturday in
the main sens trying to make it as easy as
possible for people to enroll up theirs, these superheroes.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
When it comes to excuse me, when it comes to
being able to give like you've relaxed the criteria around
people who are living in the UK and around gay men.
What is there any somebody was saying, Oh, I give
blood regularly, but I've been on antibiotics so often I
(04:29):
can't donate blood because of the antibiodocks. Is that true?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
There are some medications that would preclude you and probably
would mean that we'd defer you for a period of time.
Most people, of course of antibiotics, you know, sort of
it might be a small weight, but really it's only
to ensure that you're better. We don't want to hurt
our donuts. There are a few medical conditions which would
also preclude you from donating. But if people wanted to
find that out and have a chat before they made
(04:53):
us go through the haffle of making an appointment and
coming in, we give it a call. We've got a
wonderful team of nurses who can talk to you through
all of those things. Just to be really clear. While
we've lifted the restriction and on people from the UK,
France and Ireland, we did that February last year, we
haven't quite lifted the restriction on men who have sex
(05:13):
with men yet. We're working on it and We've got
approval from the regulator to lift that, but it means
we need to update and upgrade some of our testing platforms,
which we are doing the process of doing. Hopefully by
end of this year or possibly early next year, we'll
be able to lift those restrictions, which will be fabulous.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Who needs blood?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Lots of people. We collect about five about five thousand
donations a week and it all goes We waste virtually nothing.
The biggest, the biggest chunk goes to people with cancer,
So the biggest proportion of our donations go to people
with cancer, followed by people with emergency surgeries and massive
(05:54):
blood loss trauma, etc. That's four percent. It goes to
pregnancy and child birth and also to children, and then
a lot of our plasma products know to people were
fairly chronic, long term, very disabling conditions like immuno deficiency disorders,
(06:14):
which makes essentially people don't have enough of their antibodies,
so they need the plasma to replace their antibodies otherwise
they are permanently, permanently sick and pretty sick, very sick.
So yes, it's a huge range, but about a quarter
is for treatment of cancer.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Okay, just a couple of questions from listeners, why don't
we buy blood in plasma?
Speaker 3 (06:39):
We don't need to buy any of the fresh stuff,
the red stuff. We are self sufficient for that, and
long may it continue, because we couldn't buy it even
if we wanted to. Where would we get it from.
This is a very limited shelf life product. You know,
it's under forty days. So even if there was already
supply in Australia, for example, which there isn't, they have
(07:00):
the same challenges that we do. We couldn't buy it.
What we do do, though, for plasma is top up
the plasma collections that we get here by buying commercial products,
as we call it, which is product made from plasma
collected predominantly in America, as collected by commercial plasma collections
(07:20):
who pay donors to collect their plasma.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That was the second one. Why don't we pay donors?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
It's an interesting question and one that I get asked
a lot. The World Health Organization's gold standards for blood
donation is voluntary and it's non realinerated. You don't get paid.
You do it because you're an ultraistic donor who wants
to give something back to their community, into their country
and to the population in which they live. Our research
(07:50):
would tell us that people don't want to be paid.
And I'm not saying that would be absolutely everybody. I
mean a lot of people might say, hey, this would
be great, But you run quite quickly into kind of
ethical dilemmas when you start paying people for something that's
a prospect of human origin. Run into the issues that
are fairly well canvas and well known around the globe
(08:11):
for commercial plasma, where people are encouraged to donate very often,
which we believe is not a good thing for the
person's health. We want to keep our donors healthy and well.
But if you are being paid and it becomes quite
a large part of your ecome, it's I think it's
quite an easy step to step into. That's actually something
that we wouldn't want to be going down. So ethical dilemmas, yes,
(08:34):
but also there be is huge upfront financial cost to
do that. If you paid. If we have about one
hundred and twenty thousand regular donors we're collecting, if thousands
of donations a week, you can do the mass and say, well,
if we paid them fifty seventy five one hundred dollars each,
it then mounts up to being a very very expensive
(08:56):
way of encouraging donations. Our preference always and the same
with pretty well levery blood service that we compare ourselves with,
is it's much better to keep it really clean and
people donate because they want.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
To, yeah, not because they have to. When it comes
to people on blood thinners, can they give blood or plasma?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
It will depend on why and what for? Probably not,
But I'm not a doctor. I would pass on to
one of our wonderful team of doctors. No, probably not,
because obviously if you're on blood thinners, on warfarin or heparin,
then you're likely to bleed more and we don't really
necessarily want you to do that.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
No, that's very true, And I had a stint put
an over fifteen years ago. Would I be allowed to
give blood?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
That would be one of those case by case basis
where I encourage you to speak to one of our doctors.
If you're really fit, really healthy, really well, highly likely
that that would be the case that you could donate.
It would depend on page, and it would depend on
what other medications you may or may not be taken now,
So that would be one that I would encourage somebody
to wring and say, this is my medical history, talk
(10:06):
it through and then one of our doctors can give
you an opinion either way.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Okay. And is there an age limit.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
For a new donor. Yes, we would like our donors
to start donating, preferably before before they've turned seventy. But again,
we don't stop people donating at a certain age. If
you are healthy, fit well and want to continue, and
our doctors say, yep, look you've fitten healthy and well
and this is great that you want to donate. We
(10:33):
don't cut people off at at an uper age limit.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Brilliant, same, thank you. So you'd like people to get along.
There's a there's a very good app I used to
have on my phone which.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Donate, the Blood Service app. It does some neat things
including when you've when your blood being used, you'll get
a text message. I really love that feature myself. I
thought I've worked here for a long time because you
can be doing anything you've been listed market, you know,
watching the floor, and suddenly you get a text message
that says, hey, your bloods being used to help save
a life today. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That's pretty cool, indeed, Sam, thank you so much. Sam Cliff,
New Zealand Blood Service CEOs.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, Listen live to
news Talks it Be from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
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