SALEM, Va. – With winter weather just hitting our area and even more expected in the coming days, that means for emergency crews and folks working at the hospitals, it’s all hands on deck.
Ice and bitter temperatures have stormed across our region, and its not going away any time soon.
One group who sees the impacts of the winter storms firsthand is our local hospitals with a constant revolving door of emergencies.
“We see an uptick in volume,” said Dr. Puneet Chopra, director of emergency medicine at LewisGale. “After any kind of storm folks definitely keep their emergency departments busy.”
He said they see a little of everything.
“A lot of slip and falls injuries, trauma-related fractures and then we see a lot of respiratory and cardiac related,” Chopra said.
Oftentimes those emergencies may require a blood transfusion.
A lifesaving blood transfusion can only come from a blood donor, but after the holidays, and with people stuck at home during a storm, blood donations plummet.
One nonprofit trying to help is The Blood Connection.
“Right now we have two to three days of inventory, but we really need to be five to seven days of inventory,” said Elliott Kelley with The Blood Connection.
He said right now, they need people to come out and donate blood ahead of the next storm.
“On a normal day we need over a thousand units of blood to be able to fulfill our needs,” said Kelley. “With this storm coming and the disruptions, we are going to need well over that.”
They’re holding blood drives over the next couple of days, all across Southwest Virginia to try to meet the need.
You can find a local blood drive near you here.