Anna Nagurney: Kudos to the Easthampton Fire Department and to all blood donors

Thanks to Gazette reporter Alexa Lewis for the excellent front-page article on shortages of blood in our region, and thanks to the Easthampton Fire Department for their community blood drive in partnership with the Baystate Health Blood Donor Program [“Region fights with drop in donated blood,” Sept. 20].

I teach supply chains and humanitarian logistics and health care at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst and also conduct research on blood supply chains. Blood is a product that cannot be produced, but must be donated. As the article states, it is a lifesaving product, with each donation possibly saving as many as three lives.

As I have written in The Conversation, the pandemic produced many challenges, including the stoppage of mobile collection sites and even consolidation of blood services. It is important to make it convenient for donors to give, and community collection sites are an ideal way to make donating blood more accessible. I recall how, awhile back, we even had blood collected at the UMass Amherst Campus Center, and many of my students over the years have been very willing donors, as they tell me in my classes. It may be time again to expand mobile collection in our region.

Many thanks to the Easthampton Fire Department and to their Fire Chief Christopher Norris for their leadership. Thanks also to all the blood service organizations in our region for their important work.

Anna Nagurney

Amherst