The Cape Cod Hospital Blood Bank is in urgent need of O Negative blood donors.
While all blood types are needed on a regular basis, there is currently a shortage of O Negative, in particular.
“Type O Negative is the universal blood type, meaning that anyone can receive your blood and it can be used in transfusions for any other blood type,” said Jonathan Decoste, Senior Blood Donor Recruiter at Cape Cod Healthcare. “It is routinely in short supply and in high demand by hospitals for emergency transfusions.”
Donors to CCHC blood drives in June will receive a Blood Center T-shirt. Please see below for a complete listing of Cape Cod Healthcare blood drives in June.
June 2023 CCHC Blood Drives are scheduled for:
- June 5: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., Harwich Police Department, 183 Sisson Road, Harwich
- June 6: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., St. Anthony’s Fatima Hall – part of St. Joseph Guardian of the Holy
Family Parish, 167 East Falmouth Highway – East Falmouth
- June 7: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Falmouth Re-store, 805 Gifford St. Extension, Falmouth
- June 8: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., The Market, 6 Purchase St., Plymouth
- June 12: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., Christ the King Church, 3 Jobs Fishing Road, Mashpee
- June 13: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., Sandwich Library, 142 Main St., Sandwich
- June 14: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Yarmouth Re-Store, 28 White’s Path, Yarmouth
- June 16: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Clark Lab – 5th Floor, 360 Woods Hole Road, Woods Hole
- June 19: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., Orleans/Eastham Elks, 10 McKoy Road, Eastham
- June 20: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Northside United Methodist Church, 701 Airline Road, Brewster
- June 21: 12 noon – 6 p.m., Chatham Works, 323 Orleans Road, N. Chatham
- June 22: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Falmouth Hospital, Burwell Conference Room, 100 Ter Heun Drive, Falmouth
- June 26: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Gus Canty Center, 790 Main St., Falmouth
- June 27: 9 a.m. – 3 p.m., Cotuit Community @ Cotuit Federated Church, 40 School St., Cotuit
- June 28: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Orleans Police Department, 99 Eldredge Park Way, Orleans
- June 29: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., Brewster Police Department, 631 Harwich Road, Brewster •
To make an appointment for one of the drives listed above, please visit the Blood Donor Portal:
https://srt.capecodhealth.org/donorportal/
To make an appointment for one of the drives listed above, visit the Blood Donor Portal: https://srt.capecodhealth.org/donorportal/
Donations can also be made at the Nicholas G. Xiarhos Blood Donor Center at Cape Cod Hospital. The Donor Center is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. To make an appointment for the Nicholas G. Xiarhos Blood Donor Center, please call 508-862-5663.
Important Note: Following recently updated guidelines by the Food and Drug Administration, Cape Cod Healthcare will reinstate eligibility for donors who were previously deferred from blood donation because of travel or residence in the United Kingdom, France or Ireland. The deferral was connected to a risk of transmitting the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD, also known as mad cow disease) to blood transfusion recipients. The FDA has concluded this is no longer a geographic risk to donors who have lived in the UK and other European countries.
Previous FDA guidance recommended indefinite deferral for people who spent time in the UK from 1980 to 1996 or France and Ireland from 1980 to 2001, or people who received a blood transfusion in the UK, France or Ireland from 1980 to the present.
In light of the new guidance change, Decoste encourages those who are newly eligible to give blood donation a try. “We encourage anyone who may have been previously deferred from donating having lived, worked, studied or stationed in the military during this time frame to try again,” said Decoste.
