After her dad passed away at age 45 from pancreatitis and had difficulty receiving a blood transfusion, Tauranga resident Shelley Toy decided at age 15 that she didn't want others to experience the same difficulty.

'I started giving blood when I was in Melbourne…I had his [my dad's] blood group, which is one of the rarest I think, and I thought ‘I'm not going to put others in that position',” says Shelley, who has AB negative blood. Now 60, Shelley has been donating blood for more than 30 years.

Signed up with NZ Blood's ‘Team Red' group donation initiative – Shelley is in the top group for donating blood and plasma in New Zealand. 'There's five of us that go fortnightly for plasma on a Wednesday morning…we enjoy it, it's a good group and we have a bit of laugh.”

Not enough

Tauranga Donor Centre's donor relations coordinator Hannah Paul says unfortunately there is not enough blood and plasma being donated in our region or our country. 'On average in New Zealand as a whole we only have 3.6 per cent of eligible people donating, which is obviously not a lot when we need a minimum
16 per cent to be self-sufficient,” says Hannah.

Blood only has a ‘shelf life' of five days so is in constant need. Plasma, on the other hand, can last up to two years in a frozen state – but that's not the ideal, says Hannah – plus we need more of it. 'With plasma specifically we are importing most of it from other countries just to be able to get enough in to hospitals.”

Donating plasma

Hannah says the process of donating plasma takes on average 40 to 45 minutes longer than donating blood, which takes five to seven minutes. Donating alongside her husband Dennis Toy, Shelley says: 'Sometimes it could take my husband a good hour to give his plasma and I take about half an hour”. Hannah encourages people to take the time for plasma donations as it is a 'desperate need”. 'Plasma can be made into medicine so it gets used for heaps of different things but big users of both blood and plasma products are actually cancer patients. Unfortunately, a lot of people have to live with that.

High need

'I think a lot of people just think: ‘Someone else is donating so I don't need to', and it's important to get the message out that that isn't necessarily the case,” says Hannah.

Shelley encourages others wanting to donate to join their group: 'It's just a fun thing, that here we are, a little local group and we're the top blood donors in the country.” Sign up your own team at: https://www.nzblood.co.nz/get-involved/teamred/