The Pandemic Created A Blood Shortage. Here's How You Can Help.

Arlington TX

28 March, 2022

6:16 PM

Description

By Alexis Allison, Fort Worth Report March 28, 2022 Carol Strickland met Carol Groover at a church in Cleburne in the 1980s. Strickland, a choir member in her 20s, shared her testimony after singing a solo: She'd been born with sickle cell disease, a rare blood disorder that constricts oxygen flow to the body and disproportionately affects Black people. Groover approached her afterward, Strickland remembers: "(She) came to me crying. She said, 'You're the first person I've ever known with sickle cell.'" Strickland, 61, calls the meeting a "divine order," the beginning of a sacred friendship that would last for years until, through life's transitions, the two lost contact. Groover died from sickle cell disease in 2005. Strickland would reconnect in spirit with Groover when, in June 2020, after weeks of waiting for a blood transfusion, Strickland received blood through Carol's Promise Sickle Cell Foundation, an Arlington-based nonprofit and the namesake of her old friend. The transfusion would be one of hundreds she's received in her lifetime. But in the pandemic, demand for blood outpaced supply. In January, amid a surge in omicron cases, the American Red Cross, which provides around 40% of the nation's blood supply, announced a "blood crisis" for the first time. Two months later, the shortage is no longer as dire, but the need for regular donations continues. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.