American Red Cross opens first blood donation center based in Delaware on Concord Pike

The American Red Cross opened its first blood donation center in Delaware on Wednesday to kick off Red Cross Month.

The nonprofit provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and disaster preparedness education and supplies about 40% of the nation’s blood, some of which will now be coming from Delaware.

With the opening of the state’s new American Red Cross Blood Donation Center at 5329 Concord Pike in Brandywine Hundred, a local space will be available to collect platelets, the tiny cells in the blood that form clots and stop bleeding. Platelets are mostly used by cancer patients and other individuals facing life-threatening illnesses and injuries, according to the organization.

Before this new center, platelet donors in Delaware had to drive beyond state lines to Philadelphia or West Chester, Pennsylvania, to donate at an American Red Cross location.

Whole blood and Power Red donations, a concentrated dose of red cells typically given to trauma patients or used for emergency transfusions, also will be collected at this facility.

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This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: American Red Cross opens blood donation center on Concord Pike