By Dr. Tho Pham, Chief Medical Officer Did you know that many blood group systems exist beyond ABO (A, B, O and AB) and Rh (+ and -)? And that many donors have rare combinations of certain clinically relevant blood...
By Karen Hendryk, Donor Recruitment Manager Immediate Impact of COVID Though March 2020 was when an official pandemic was declared, February 2020 was when SBC was hit with one of the most significant challenges thus far: cancellation of blood drives....
By Krista Thomas, Communications Strategist Ernest Boyd has been giving blood for decades. What started as a way to save the lives of others, however, has saved his own life multiple times. Becoming a Platelet Donor Ernest first really...
In the start of April 2020, SBC became one of the first blood centers in the nation to create a COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) program. The program, which encouraged recovered COVID-19 patients to donate antibody-rich plasma for current COVID-19 patients,...
By Marino Bozic, Research and Clinical Services Manager When you come in to make a whole blood or apheresis donation at SBC, you may notice the phlebotomists collecting tubes from your donation. One of the tubes you will see drawn...
By Deepti Sharma, PhD, Clinical Laboratory Scientist; Tamara A. Vayntrub, Project Manager; Bing Melody Zhang, MD, MS, FCAP, Assistant Director, HLA Lab SBC is now using next-generation sequencing (NGS) as the basis for its HLA typing method for both bone...
To help paint a clearer picture of how the challenges of 2020 affected teams all around the Blood Center, we asked team members to tell us, in a few sentences, what being an SBC team member in 2020 meant to...
August 22, 1950 – May 18, 2020 It is with deep sadness that we inform our donor community of the passing of one of our charge nurses, Susan Belanger, on May 18, 2020. For nearly 20 years, Susan, Sue B.,...
The below is a Q&A with Blood Drive Coordinator Jim Gardner of Good Karma Bikes. Q: How long have you been holding blood drives with SBC, and what first made you become a Blood Drive Coordinator (BDC)? A: I’ve been...
As is our tradition with our winter PULSE editions, we like to give a special shout-out to all donors who have reached a milestone since our last publication (in this case, between December 1, 2019, and November 15, 2020). Your...