Posted on 12/21/2010 7:22:25 PM PST by doug from upland
A Special Holiday Request Posted: December 21, 2010
The State of California recently adopted stricter anti-pollution regulations which obligate the blood bank to progressively decommission seven out of eight of its existing bloodmobiles. As a consequence, we need an extra $1 million for our bloodmobile fleet. So I am asking you to make a generous contribution so that we can start acquiring replacement bloodmobiles critical to our life-sustaining mission in the community.
Blood is powerful, irreplaceable, and essential to our security. In the U.S., someone needs blood every two seconds to survive and recover from injuries, cancers, complications during surgery and childbirth, and many other grave conditions. These patients include infants, children, and adults -- in other words, our family members, friends, neighbors, and ourselves.
The San Diego Blood Bank supplies most of the blood products given to patients in our region. Our products are thoroughly tested, properly matched to patients’ needs, and delivered to the right place at the right time, every day of the year. We carry out our mission so reliably that from the point of view of doctors and patients, blood is routinely “just there” when they need it, like water out of the tap.
Bloodmobiles are vital links in the chain underpinning the dependable availability of blood. Without bloodmobiles, the San Diego Blood Bank could not collect enough blood units to meet our community’s needs. Although we operate several fixed-site donor centers, mobile collections account for half the blood donated. Without our fleet, few of our 1,800 yearly mobile blood drives -- averaging 35 per week -- could take place. But unless we can raise the funds to start replacing our bloodmobiles now, the fleet will inevitably shrink, until we can no longer reach the donors who give half the blood we collect.
The San Diego Blood Bank has been a frugal steward of its mobile collection units. In fact, we still have a vehicle purchased in 1982! Based on this experience, we initially estimated it would cost $850,000 to refurbish or replace aging bloodmobiles over the next several years.
Today a new bloodmobile represents an investment of $250,000 when fully equipped and compliant with government standards. The price is likely to increase before we have replaced all the mobile units.
The $1-million additional cost of complying with new regulations and sustaining the bloodmobile fleet will stretch us financially. But it’s doable with your help, and it must be done! Furthermore, besides bringing the blood bank into compliance with state rules, the new bloodmobiles will be more efficient and easier to operate and maintain, reducing our collection costs significantly.
The San Diego Blood Bank is an independent non-profit organization, not a government agency or a company run to make profits for shareholders. We cover our normal costs with payments from the hospitals and clinics that use the blood we supply. This means we simply must rely on friends for funding special investments like bloodmobiles.
It’s virtually certain that you or someone close to you will one day need blood to recover from trauma, cancer, or some other threat to life. Like me, you may already have a friend or relative who is alive and healthy today thanks to transfused blood.
This is a wonderful -- and extremely urgent! -- opportunity for you and me to help make sure that blood will “just be there” for ourselves and the people we care about. Please give generously! Click here to donate today.
And thank you again for being our partner in securing the supply of blood and blood products for our community.
Most sincerely,
R. Elaine Hanson, M.D.
President, Board of Directors
San Diego Blood Bank
P.S. In addition to donating your blood, one of the most important things you can do for the blood bank is to help replace our bloodmobiles to comply with new regulations. Your investment will have value for our community for many years to come.
LMAO!!!!
Dont give a dime.
California is starting their death panels up now.
Yes, but with no bloodmobiles, and no blood donations, people will tend to expire, thus reducing the human carbon footprint (and, let’s face it, there’s no shortage of people in California). So, it sounds like a win-win for CARB.
Let them stew in the mess they’ve made.
Not to mention that these Liberal Tyrants feel perfectly justified in making financial decisions for thousands of commercial and charitable enterprises.
Many small to medium business may be put out of business by these decrees that trucks that do not meet their exhaust standard must be off the road by an arbitrary date.
Maybe California CARB can do an Obama style deal like the businesses that got to opt out of health care
California could let them keep their blood mobiles in exchange for 1/2 the blood.
Bureaucratic Vampires
Wonderful. This small company is one of my customers (I service their IT infrastructure) and thus will likely negatively effect my business as well.
And still the clueless morons in this state continue to elect totalitarian liberals who create these absurd regulations. This state will simply need to fail, and painfully hard, in order for sanity to return. I wonder if it will ever happen, or will civilization simply evaporate in this once great state.
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