How Are Blood Donations Transported?

Video Transcript

"Here, we have our distribution area, this is the last stop before our products leave to go to the hospital. This refrigerator, contains red blood cells that have had the leukocyte reduced or filtered out. We have filtered out the white blood cells. These are all of our refrigerators, where we have special type of items, such as premature sacs or premature babies. Also, there are special antigen needs. Platelets are in the next fridge and further down are our freezers. All of this equipment is for our people here in distribution. As soon as they get an order or a fax from any one of the many hospitals and clinics that we serve, they start getting the products. They prepare one of these small coolers, like the one I showed you earlier. Sometimes we use our bigger coolers, depending on how many products we have to send. There's a limit on how many we are supposed to put in the cooler. We have to follow the guidelines in our SOPs. If we are sending red blood cells, we pack it with regular ice or wet ice. If it is a frozen product, we use dry ice which is about -40 degrees. Once, they are done our drivers come and they ship it out. We also have a window here, where researchers come and order our white blood cells or Buffy coat. Actually, they order quite a few. We just take their order. If they need it the next day or the same day, we'll arrange that and they will come and pick it up. We have both a 'drive-thru' window of sorts, where researchers walk-up to and we have drivers come and actually deliver our products."