Man's 42nd blood donation may be last after blood clinic closes

For Russell Thiessen, regularly donating blood at Brandon's Canadian Blood Services clinic is a family affair. Wednesday night, he's marking a special milestone with his family by his side.

It could also be his last blood donation, thanks to the upcoming closure of the Brandon clinic.

Thiessen, 42, will be making his 42nd donation tonight, an occasion he's planning to mark flanked by his wife and four kids, and with his three brothers donating by his side.

Thiessen has been donating blood for more than 20 years. His first donation was at age 18 at a mobile clinic in Virden, Man., a town not far from his rural farm west of Brandon. 

He's since been donating at the permanent clinic in Brandon, roughly 50 kilometres away from his farm in the Rural Municipality of Sifton. But the clinic has announced it will close this June. 

• Canadian Blood Services to shut down Brandon donor clinic
• Canadian Blood Services looking for ethnically diverse donors, aged 17 to 35

"When we planned it, I had no clue at that time [of the closure]," Thiessen said in a phone interview with CBC News. "It was kind of a shock to hear that they were planning to look at these closures."

Canadian Blood Services cited low donation numbers as a reason for the closure, set for June 8. The site has an annual target of 5,000 units of blood per year, but officials said it has only achieved about 75 to 80 per cent of that in the past five years. 

Thiessen said he's saddened to hear the clinic, where he tried to donate three to five times per year, is closing.

Tonight could be his last donation, as the busy spring seeding season is about to get underway and he'll busy on his farm until after the clinic closes.

CBS plans to replace the clinic with a mobile clinic that visits Brandon once every two weeks. While Thiessen said that visiting the mobile site is an option, it won't be the same as the permanent clinic. 

'They know me by name' 

"When I go in there, I'm not just another number on the wall," he said. "I'm not just a person that they're just seeing for the first time or once in a while.

"They know me by name, they ask me how my kids are doing, my family, how things are going on the farm."

He said he isn't sure if he'll be able to attend the mobile clinic when it comes to Brandon, and suspects others won't.

"I expect what's going to happen is we're going to have a lot of rural residents choose not to drive to Brandon to meet the mobile clinic," Thiessen said. "But the people in Brandon, I'm hoping, will still hit it." 

And the loss of Thieseen's three to five yearly donations, which he said is more than doctors recommend people give, could be a blow to CBS as well. With a blood type of B positive, a less-common type, his blood is in high demand. 

Mobile clinics halted

CBS is also halting all mobile clinics run from the Brandon clinic, meaning residents in the Manitoba towns of Shilo, Boissevain, Killarney, Minnedosa, Glenboro, Dauphin and Hamiota will no longer have a place to donate, according to the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union, which represents some of the clinic's staff. 

The upcoming closure of the CBS Brandon site means 17 employees, including nurses, supervisors and other clinical staff, will be laid off this summer.

Thiessen hopes Canadian Blood Services finds a way to keep the clinic open for donations, and is urging others who want to keep the Brandon clinic open to let CBS know how much it's valued in the Wheat City.

He's also got his member of Parliament, Brandon-Souris Conservative Larry Maguire, involved. 

"I think that there's a better way of dealing with it than instantly shutting down the Brandon clinic," he said. "What I'm going to do is try and communicate with CBS to try and let them now know how important it is to myself."

The closure means the only permanent site for blood donation in Manitoba will be in Winnipeg.