Ayr woman's on call in emergencies

Jun 26 2009

HEATHER Davidson is a super-donor.

Working with BloodDonor 24, Heather is one of their on call donors – making visits to donation centres when they are in dire need of blood products.

Heather, who lives in Ayr with her partner John Reid, has been a BloodDonor 24 volunteer for nearly eight months now, but has made blood donations for the past two-and-a-half years.

Heather got into on-call donating after feeling the guilt of missing the visitations of community blood drives.

Striving for ways to help, BloodDonor 24 offered Heather a place on their volunteers register after meeting the BD 24’s requirements.

Heather’s blood group is O-negative – the universal blood group that only nine per cent of Scots possess – which is used for treating victims at the scene of accidents and emergencies where there is not enough time to determine the patients’ blood type.

Continuing to attend the local visitations made by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, Heather also makes her way as far as the donation centre in Nelson Mandela Place in Glasgow.

She added: “I’ll go where I’m needed. I go every 12 weeks, but if I’m needed urgently then I’ll go up sooner.”

But if super donors like Heather are moving on to other things, the SNBTS need others to take their place and keep giving blood.

And John is so impressed by her dedication that he urged the health service to make more people aware of the 24-hour service.

He said: “There isn’t enough correspondence on the 24-hour service that’s provided. We need people to do this more often. It’s no good if there’s a shortage and you have to wait over a month for a bus coming round.”