General Blood Statistics
General
- One in three Australians will need blood or blood products in their lifetime
- One in 30 Australians give blood each year (3%)
- One blood donation can save up to three lives
- Australia needs more than 31,000 donations every week
Statistics
Donor statistics for 2018-19
- 523,688 Australians voluntarily gave blood, plasma or platelets to help others
- 100,099 new blood donors welcomed
- 32% of Australia's blood donations made by members of Lifeblood Teams
- 1,427,659 individual blood donations by Australian donors
- 978,196 blood products delivered to hospitals and healthcare providers to help Australian patients
Collection centres
- 96 blood donor centres and mobile centres
Checklist
Most people are able to give blood if they:
- Feel fit and healthy
- Are aged between 18 and 75
- Weigh over 50kg
You may be temporarily unable to give blood if you:
- Are on certain medications or antibiotics
- Have a cold or are feeling unwell in any way
- Have certain medical conditions
- Changed medications
- Recently had surgery
- Have had recent dental treatment
- Recently travelled
- Had a piercing
- Have ever had a serious heart condition
You will not be able to give blood if you:
- Have had a tattoo in the past four months. But so long as your tattoo was done on licensed or regulated premises in Australia (like a commercial tattoo parlour or a cosmetic clinic) and is healing well, you can donate plasma.
- Have visited or lived in the UK for a cumulative total of six months or more between 1980 and 1996
- Have engaged in male to male sexual activity or other specified at risk sexual activity in the past 12 months
- Have recently been pregnant or given birth
- Have ever had a serious blood disorder or disease
- Have 'used drugs' by injection or been injected with drugs not prescribed by a doctor or dentist in the past 5 years.