January 14, 2026 • 7 mins
NY Blood Emergency: How YOU Can Help Save Lives Today!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fou on five point one New Yor except papin R
and B. We're inside trending topics. If you're just joining
us on a hub day, it's not only any old
hub day. We got a blood drive going on today
in the station, which is very exciting because our city
needs us, They need our blood. The New York Blood
Center has declared a blood emergency and is issuing an
(00:20):
urgent call for donors. And I have Sarah Horn here.
She is the marketing manager at the New York Blood Center,
so she can answer all our questions absolutely. Hi, Sarah. Hi.
So does this happen often, that we're in this kind
of crisis.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It happens more often than I'd like to admit. But
you know, the holidays took a toll on us. Right
December time took a toll. People traveled, illnesses. I'm sure
you've reported on it news stories, people have the flu,
people are sick. So all of those things compounded together,
donors didn't come out as much as we would have
(00:57):
liked them to over the last couple months.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Okay, So it's not so much that that more bad
things are happening that more blood is needed. It's that
we don't have enough enough, not enough blood is being
donated for the needs that are existing.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
That's correct. So when what it means when we call
a blood emergency is there is about a two days
supply to supply to over two hundred hospitals in the
Tri state area.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
So it is at a critical level. And who needs blood?
Accident victims, people that are going in for surgery, cancer patients,
people with sickle cell disease that require transfusions regularly. So
blood is so important and needed and doesn't have, you know,
a long shelf life, so we constantly need to renew
(01:45):
that supply to be able to get to hospitals.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
That totally makes sense. So when you when they say
it is a declared there's an urgent need or a
blood emergency, like, give me a if we normally operating
at a ten ten get ellens, how many gallons are
we down to? Now? Can you say that? Or was
that really hard to say?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I don't know about that, but it's like I say, it's.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I'm just trying to get a gauge of how bad
certain situation is.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's pretty it's pretty urgent. So we like to have
a you know, a certain inventory level. Let's just say,
you know, ten day supply, we have two day supply.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
If that makes sense?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Scary, yes, scared because God forbid something big happens or
some type of emergency or I don't know. Yeah I
get a lot of earthquakes here. But in earth frank
An accident the.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Week of tragedy, people come out. They do so when
we call a blood emergency and thank you for having
me on once again hopefully spreading the word and letting
the listeners know that there is an emergency, people are
going to come out and roll up their sleeve and
give the gift of life and donate blood.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Okay, so who do you need? Who do not need?
Who should show up? Who should not show up?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Everybody who is eligible should show up, right, Most people
are eligible to donate, and they, you know, they know.
So who's not eligible to donate? You know, maybe somebody
that has, you know, a certain type of disease, or
if you're even not sure if you're eligible, you can
(03:20):
call us and we can say yes, you're eligible or
no you're not. And you know, recently the FDA changed
their guidelines on who can actually donate, So now we
based it on individual donor assessment. So when donors come
in to donate, they fill out a questionnaire and based
on their answers, provides their eligibility whether they can donate
(03:44):
or not. So for a long time, you know, gay
men thought that they weren't able to donate. But because
the FDA changed their rules and it's based on your
individual donor assessment and how you're answering those questions, the
door has been opened to a much broader audience.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
God, what so okay, So somebody who's never donated blood before,
and what is the ex I've done it? So I know,
I believe I got like a little cookie and a juice,
and you know I've done it before, and I'm not
an easy stick. You like my I don't know what
happens to my veins? Are like like, I don't have
any veins.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So couple, you definitely have veins and the heart is
pumping your blood, So what happens? Right? So you come in.
We like people to make an appointment, but even if
you don't make an appointment, walkin's welcome. Just show up
and we accommodate everybody who comes into a donor center
or a drive. You fill out the health history questionnaire
that I was talking about. Then you meet with our phlebotomis.
(04:40):
They take your temperature, your pulse, your blood pressure, they
check your iron. If all works out there, then you
go into the donor bed and the phlebotomist does their
best to give you a nice clean stick. And the
act of donating the actual pint of blood takes somewhere
between I'd say five in fifteen minutes. Nothing, So it's
(05:02):
pretty quick, right, that's like maybe three songs on the radio, yes, so.
And then after that, you know, you go into the
cafe and that's when you get the cookies in the
juice and you're on your way.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
We like the cookies in the juice. Yeah, I like
the cookies. I like a price at the end, little
cookie for sure. Don't go wrong with.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
That whole process.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Do you need to fast? Does people need to fast
or anything? Because that's a misconception.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I think we definitely want people to be well hydrated
and eat a good meal before you come into donate.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Okay, don't be like hungry and queasy.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, definitely, you know, eat eat a meal before you
come in to donate, and be well hydrated.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Okay, now where do they go and how do they
get information?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Exactly where do they go? So if you're looking for
where a donor center near you is or a drive
in your community, ny BC dot org got it. If
you don't have access to the internet, you can always
make a phone call. You can call eight hundred nine
(06:02):
three three two five six six, and the person on
the other end we'll be happy to schedule you an
appointment or tell you where you can go to donate.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Okay, and if you're tuning in late to this, in
the middle of the conversation, I'm gonna post it so
we have it on our YouTube page so you can
get all the information you need. We're gonna be here
donating blood today and you can go to power one
of five one dot com to get any information that
could help it. Go donate blood. Our city needs us.
We're down to two out of ten and that's not good.
And God for bit, something happens. It could be your sister,
(06:34):
your brother, your mother, your loved one is in need
of blood, and we don't want that for our loved
ones or for our city.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So we say one pint of blood saves three lives.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Look at that. If you felt like if you felt
unaccomplished today, you know what I mean. You can go
out and save three lives just like that in five
to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Just do it before work. You could do it on
your lunch hour before you go home. On the weekends,
we try and make it available to everybody, so coming
into people's communities, open late, open early, so people have
access to us.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Wonderful. Thank you, Sarah, you cleared it all up for us.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
We're gonna get the city outside donating blood, and thank
you again to Sarah and the New York Blood Center,
and go do what you gotta do.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Guys.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
About one to five point one
Fou on five point one New Yor except papin R
and B. We're inside trending topics. If you're just joining
us on a hub day, it's not only any old
hub day. We got a blood drive going on today
in the station, which is very exciting because our city
needs us, They need our blood. The New York Blood
Center has declared a blood emergency and is issuing an
(00:20):
urgent call for donors. And I have Sarah Horn here.
She is the marketing manager at the New York Blood Center,
so she can answer all our questions absolutely. Hi, Sarah. Hi.
So does this happen often, that we're in this kind
of crisis.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It happens more often than I'd like to admit. But
you know, the holidays took a toll on us. Right
December time took a toll. People traveled, illnesses. I'm sure
you've reported on it news stories, people have the flu,
people are sick. So all of those things compounded together,
donors didn't come out as much as we would have
(00:57):
liked them to over the last couple months.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Okay, So it's not so much that that more bad
things are happening that more blood is needed. It's that
we don't have enough enough, not enough blood is being
donated for the needs that are existing.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
That's correct. So when what it means when we call
a blood emergency is there is about a two days
supply to supply to over two hundred hospitals in the
Tri state area.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
So it is at a critical level. And who needs blood?
Accident victims, people that are going in for surgery, cancer patients,
people with sickle cell disease that require transfusions regularly. So
blood is so important and needed and doesn't have, you know,
a long shelf life, so we constantly need to renew
(01:45):
that supply to be able to get to hospitals.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
That totally makes sense. So when you when they say
it is a declared there's an urgent need or a
blood emergency, like, give me a if we normally operating
at a ten ten get ellens, how many gallons are
we down to? Now? Can you say that? Or was
that really hard to say?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I don't know about that, but it's like I say, it's.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I'm just trying to get a gauge of how bad
certain situation is.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's pretty it's pretty urgent. So we like to have
a you know, a certain inventory level. Let's just say,
you know, ten day supply, we have two day supply.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
If that makes sense?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Scary, yes, scared because God forbid something big happens or
some type of emergency or I don't know. Yeah I
get a lot of earthquakes here. But in earth frank
An accident the.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Week of tragedy, people come out. They do so when
we call a blood emergency and thank you for having
me on once again hopefully spreading the word and letting
the listeners know that there is an emergency, people are
going to come out and roll up their sleeve and
give the gift of life and donate blood.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Okay, so who do you need? Who do not need?
Who should show up? Who should not show up?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Everybody who is eligible should show up, right, Most people
are eligible to donate, and they, you know, they know.
So who's not eligible to donate? You know, maybe somebody
that has, you know, a certain type of disease, or
if you're even not sure if you're eligible, you can
(03:20):
call us and we can say yes, you're eligible or
no you're not. And you know, recently the FDA changed
their guidelines on who can actually donate, So now we
based it on individual donor assessment. So when donors come
in to donate, they fill out a questionnaire and based
on their answers, provides their eligibility whether they can donate
(03:44):
or not. So for a long time, you know, gay
men thought that they weren't able to donate. But because
the FDA changed their rules and it's based on your
individual donor assessment and how you're answering those questions, the
door has been opened to a much broader audience.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
God, what so okay, So somebody who's never donated blood before,
and what is the ex I've done it? So I know,
I believe I got like a little cookie and a juice,
and you know I've done it before, and I'm not
an easy stick. You like my I don't know what
happens to my veins? Are like like, I don't have
any veins.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So couple, you definitely have veins and the heart is
pumping your blood, So what happens? Right? So you come in.
We like people to make an appointment, but even if
you don't make an appointment, walkin's welcome. Just show up
and we accommodate everybody who comes into a donor center
or a drive. You fill out the health history questionnaire
that I was talking about. Then you meet with our phlebotomis.
(04:40):
They take your temperature, your pulse, your blood pressure, they
check your iron. If all works out there, then you
go into the donor bed and the phlebotomist does their
best to give you a nice clean stick. And the
act of donating the actual pint of blood takes somewhere
between I'd say five in fifteen minutes. Nothing, So it's
(05:02):
pretty quick, right, that's like maybe three songs on the radio, yes, so.
And then after that, you know, you go into the
cafe and that's when you get the cookies in the
juice and you're on your way.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
We like the cookies in the juice. Yeah, I like
the cookies. I like a price at the end, little
cookie for sure. Don't go wrong with.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
That whole process.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Do you need to fast? Does people need to fast
or anything? Because that's a misconception.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I think we definitely want people to be well hydrated
and eat a good meal before you come into donate.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Okay, don't be like hungry and queasy.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, definitely, you know, eat eat a meal before you
come in to donate, and be well hydrated.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Okay, now where do they go and how do they
get information?
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Exactly where do they go? So if you're looking for
where a donor center near you is or a drive
in your community, ny BC dot org got it. If
you don't have access to the internet, you can always
make a phone call. You can call eight hundred nine
(06:02):
three three two five six six, and the person on
the other end we'll be happy to schedule you an
appointment or tell you where you can go to donate.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Okay, and if you're tuning in late to this, in
the middle of the conversation, I'm gonna post it so
we have it on our YouTube page so you can
get all the information you need. We're gonna be here
donating blood today and you can go to power one
of five one dot com to get any information that
could help it. Go donate blood. Our city needs us.
We're down to two out of ten and that's not good.
And God for bit, something happens. It could be your sister,
(06:34):
your brother, your mother, your loved one is in need
of blood, and we don't want that for our loved
ones or for our city.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So we say one pint of blood saves three lives.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Look at that. If you felt like if you felt
unaccomplished today, you know what I mean. You can go
out and save three lives just like that in five
to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Just do it before work. You could do it on
your lunch hour before you go home. On the weekends,
we try and make it available to everybody, so coming
into people's communities, open late, open early, so people have
access to us.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Wonderful. Thank you, Sarah, you cleared it all up for us.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
We're gonna get the city outside donating blood, and thank
you again to Sarah and the New York Blood Center,
and go do what you gotta do.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Guys.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
About one to five point one
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