New blood centre seeks to harvest ‘liquid gold’

IN medical circles, it’s called ‘liquid gold’. Blood plasma has a distinctive gold colour, but its real value is in its long shelf life and versatility for a range of medical treatments, including for cancer.

But until now, it has not been possible to donate plasma in Brunswick. That changed on Friday, when the first new permanent blood donation centre in Victoria for a decade opened in Brunswick.

The new centre, on the ground floor of the apartment building at 284-294 Albert Street which backs onto the Brunswick Woolworths car park, follows Red Cross Lifeblood operating a pop up donation centre at the Brunswick Town Hall for the past three years.

Spacious and full of light, the Brunswick centre is the prototype for all future Lifeblood centres in Australia, including another new centre which will open in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville at the end of October.

It is one of only 16 permanent centres in Victoria that are equipped to take donations of both blood and plasma.

The Brunswick centre has 14 couches and employs 12 full-time staff. It will be open seven days a week, with extended hours from 7am to 8pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Until now, donors from the inner north have either had to travel to Collins Street in the city or Airport West to attend a fully-equipped centre that takes both blood and plasma.

Brunswick is the first permanent new centre in Victoria for 10 years, and the first anywhere in Australia for five years.

Genevieve Dobson from Lifeblood said the decision to locate the centre in Brunswick is part of a deliberate strategy to increase regular donations from a younger demographic of people.

“There’s been a lot of analysis of demographics and population gone into making this decision,” she said.

“We had a pop up centre in the town hall for the last few years and that was really popular so it helped to already have an existing donor panel already in place. When we had a close look at the population data and demographics, we could see it’s quite a young demographic in Brunswick which helps when we want to recruit lifelong donors.”

Ms Dobson said Lifeblood had set itself a conservative target of 10,000 donations in Brunswick in the first 12 months, which would be a significant boost to Australia’s stocks given hospitals and other healthcare providers need 33,000 donations each week.

She said most blood donated at Brunswick will be used within days, and the centre has been designed so couriers can collect donations seamlessly from a special room where the blood and plasma is stored at between 20 and 24 degrees.

The new Brunswick centre is particularly important because unlike pop up centres, it is able to collect plasma.

“Plasma is more versatile and used in a range of medicines and treatments, so it’s what a lot of medical experts refer to as liquid gold,” Ms Dobson said.

It is obtained by separating the plasma from red cells, which are returned to the donor’s body.

While blood takes less time to donate – allow an hour for a whole blood donation and approximately 1½  hours for a plasma donation – donors are able to give plasma once every fortnight, compared to every 12 weeks for blood. It also lasts longer than blood: 12 months compared to 42 days.

Coincidentally, this week is International Plasma Awareness Week, during which Red Cross Lifeblood will be countering the myth that you cannot donate blood and plasma if you have had a tattoo.