The Palaceside Building’s regular “mobile blood drive” by donation bus will be held for two days, Thursday, April 14, and Friday, April 15, in front of the west entrance. With blood supplies tight, the Tokyo Metropolitan Red Cross Blood Center appeals: “For those waiting for transfusions, we need the cooperation of as many people as possible.”
At the start of the fiscal year, help from schools, companies, and groups tends to fall, and the pandemic has further reduced donors. In Tokyo in particular, actual cumulative 400 ml donors from April 1 to 6 were about 650 short of what was needed, with types A and O especially scarce.
The building hosts mobile drives twice a year, in spring and autumn. This time, too, donations will be accepted under thorough, reinforced infection controls, including temperature checks, hand disinfection, and ventilation inside the bus. Drawing blood itself takes about 10 minutes, but with the interview the process takes 30 to 40 minutes from reception to finish.
Please bring a donor card or donor handbook; if you take medication, a medicine notebook; and if this is your first donation, ID or a staff badge. Donors receive results of tests such as ALT (GTP) and gamma-GTP, which the Red Cross says can be put to good use in managing one’s health.