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NORTH CAROLINA VETERANS FIGHTING TO KEEP BLOOD
DRIVES -- For local veterans groups that
mobilized to collect
blood for U.S. troops, no good deed goes
unpunished.
Background on this story here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/
nfJUL07/nf071207-7.htm
Story here...
http://www.news-record.com/
apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070729
/NEWSREC0101/70728017
Story below:
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Ahearn: Vets struggle to keep blood drives
For local veterans groups that mobilized to collect blood for U.S.
troops, no good deed goes unpunished.
In a flap that has bewildered blood donors and stymied VFW and American
Legion posts seeking to support combat soldiers, an Army medical
commander wrote that the military can meet its own blood needs.
The statement by the director of the Armed Services Blood Program
contradicted appeals veterans groups say they got from the same program.
At veterans conferences in 2005 and 2006, according to state and local
VFW officers, the ASBP asked for civilian help, noting that the
branches' eligible donor pool had shrunken. As a result, according to a
widely circulated Army brochure, the military was paying $250 per pint
of blood from private sources including the American Red Cross.
The dispute came partly after a story in this space July 11. Veterans
posts in Greensboro, High Point, Burlington and Winston-Salem were told
that military blood drives were no longer allowed outside federal
installations and that these blood drives couldn't be advertised.
In response to concerns by veterans groups, Navy Cmdr. Michael Libby,
director of the military blood program, wrote that the rules weren't
new, just being "re-emphasized."
"ASBP collections have always met the needs of our troops and military
treatment facilities needs without infringing upon civilian needs,"
wrote Libby, who cited an "unwritten agreement" not to infringe on
private blood collection efforts as the reason the military doesn't
solicit blood donors.
An Army spokeswoman, meanwhile, wrote that photos of soldiers giving
blood in combat field hospitals — as in a recent issue of the Marine
Corps Times — did not mean there was an "inadequate" blood supply. And
even when the military does buy blood from private sources, spokeswoman
Margaret Tippy said, the price is an "average" $180 per pint, not $250.
Confused by the mixed message? So are veterans posts — and not just in
North Carolina. In Austin, Texas, for example, a VFW blood drive was
shut down by the rule "re-emphasis," even though a post commander cited
another forgotten rule, this one from the Army's own handbook:
Blood collections should be held on federal property only, the rule
says, "except during periods of national emergency, mobilization or
war."
The same problem came up in Ohio, when a group in Columbus tried to
organize a military blood drive after a "60 Minutes" story showed a
soldier who lost his leg in a field hospital because there wasn't enough
blood available.
Although the military calls its blood program "self-sufficient," the
program bought 2,030 units of blood last year, Cmdr. Libby told the
Columbus Dispatch, mostly for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At the final military blood drive Tuesday at the Greensboro VFW post,
the stringent standards help explain why the pool among military and
retired military is shrinking:
Apart from the usual exclusions, military donors can't have traveled to
England or Germany from 1980-96 — a mad cow concern — or to Iraq or
Afghanistan for a year, for fear of blood-borne parasites.
That excludes many, at a time when soldiers at bases such as Fort Bragg
are on their third and fourth deployments. Local VFWs are scrambling to
find federal sites for their blood drives but fear that if they
can't advertise them, they'll get no donors.
"It's my understanding I'm not even supposed to talk to the press," said
Burlington VFW Cmdr. Buzz Griggs, a Vietnam-era Air Force vet. "But
that'll be a cold day in hell."
(Currently, the VFW plans a drive in Greensboro Sept. 11 — for the new
location, call 272-0228 — and Burlington Sept. 13; call 446-0044.)
Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or
lahearn@news-record.com
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Larry Scott --
