Rhode Island’s ‘Blood War’
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Call it a blood feud.
But not the old-fashioned kind.
Instead, two well-respected charities are fighting over who gets to draw your blood.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe Rhode Island Blood Center says it all started when a regional branch of the American Red Cross began holding blood drives in Ocean State territory, using an office in Massachusetts as its base of operations.
A spokesman for the Blood Center denied that his group was spoiling for a fight. “They may possibly be in conflict with us,” said Frank Prosnitz, the organization’s communications manager. “We’re not the interlopers here.”
The Blood Center was established in 1979 to provide blood to all the hospitals in Rhode Island—and, 30 years later, it remains the sole provider. But its successful management of the blood supply in the state is now threatened, Prosnitz said. “When somebody else comes in and starts to divide the blood pool, that puts the supply in jeopardy,” he told GoLocalProv.
For the average Rhode Islander he said the issue comes down to this: Do you want to donate your blood to benefit your neighbors and friends in your local community?
Red Cross decries ‘scare tactics’ and ‘inflammatory language’
The Red Cross does not draw such fines lines, a spokeswoman countered. “The Red Cross believes in blood without borders to make sure that blood is available whenever and wherever it is needed,” said Donna M. Morrissey, the spokeswoman for the Northeast region of the Red Cross.
Upon hearing her organization described as an “interloper,” Morrissey responded: “I don’t believe that using scare tactics or inflammatory language is a productive way to ensure there is a sufficient blood supply.”
She denied that the Red Cross, which has held about 10 blood drives in Rhode Island since the fall, has disrupted the blood supply. So far, she said just 183 units of blood had been collected.
And the Red Cross isn’t the only moving into new territories, she added. “It seems a bit hypocritical that the Rhode Island Blood Center is coming into Massachusetts, but they don’t want any other blood banking in Rhode Island,” Morrissey said.
But Prosnitz said the Blood Center was invited into Massachusetts by some hospitals. And he said the center gave more than it received: Its Bay State blood drives yielded 2,000 units of blood but it has supplied a total of 10,000 units to hospitals in the state.
PR agency takes swipe at blood center
Now, even a local PR agency is wading into the fray—poopooing the idea that locally given blood should stay local.
“Now, if the Red Cross were getting blood from Rhode Islanders and selling it to al-Qaeda, then I could see the problem,” writes Charlie Morgan on the blog for Omnia Diamond. “As far as I know, the Red Cross is collecting healthy blood and giving it to people that need it. If this isn’t the case, there should be an investigation into how they operate. But I’m assuming everything is on the up-and-up.”
Meanwhile, where is the Rhode Island chapter of the Red Cross in all of this? Yesterday, local officials declined comment, but Prosnitz said the two groups had always been on good terms. “Our relationship with the Rhode Island Red Cross has always been an exceptional one,” he said.
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