Southern California blood shortage

The Southern California Red Cross is reporting that they have a severe blood shortage. In an e-mail I received a few days ago they said they had only a three-hour supply of 0- blood, and on their website they report the following inventory levels ("based on the desired seven-day supply"):

• 0.4% of O-
  
• 2.5% of O+
  
• 3.7% of A-
  
• 3.8% of A+
  
• 8.1% of B-
  
• 1.9% of B+
  
• 8.1% of AB-
  
• 15.2% of AB+

I donated blood a few weeks ago, so I can't donate now. Can you donate? If so, go to givelife.org or call 1-800-givelife. Even if you're not in Southern California, I'm sure that other areas of the country need blood donations too.

If you think you can't donate blood because of medications or some other condition, you might want to check again. As I wrote about here, many medications and conditions that people believe exclude them from donating blood actually don't.

So please, go donate.