Prince George City Council will provide a letter of support to help bring a blood donation centre back to the North.
The topic came to Council as an letter of correspondence from Mark Karjaluoto and Chantelle Messier from Our Blood Counts.
The group is seeking to bring a plasma donor centre operated by Canadian Blood Services back to Northern BC.
According to their letter, a petition in support of bringing a centre back to Northern BC has garnered more than 1,300 signatures since June 2024.
“I was a regular blood donor here in Prince George for many, many years, in fact I almost reached 100 donations before the donation clinic was pulled in 2015,” said Councillor Ron Polillo.
“I think this is really an important movement to bring back a plasma donation centre to the City. I think it makes a compelling case, the importance of plasma, and Canada’s plasma shortage.”
Polillo moved to have Council provide a letter of support, as well as referring the item to the City’s Standing Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs.
“It is an important piece of work, I fully agree,” said Councillor Susan Scott.
“I used to work at Vancouver Community College and would walk across the other side of the campus to Canadian Blood Services, and I was a faithful donor ever since I moved here, so I would be delighted to return to that practice.”
Mayor Simon Yu referenced previous competitions with the City of Kelowna to see who could donate more blood.
“Now that the population is different, perhaps we should do a similar contest on a per capita base,” he said.
“Something like that to get the spirit of competition back to this very important piece of donation work that we have to do as a society.”
Council unanimously supported providing a letter of support.
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