San Antonio blood bank lends support to Fort Hood victims

From the San Antonia Business Journal

The South Texas Blood & Tissue Center has agreed to ship needed supplies of platelets to Fort Hood for the victims of Thursday's tragedy at the Army base.

U.S. Army officials are continuing to respond to a shooting spree at the Central Texas installation on Thursday that left 13 people dead and 30 wounded.

Blood supplies in San Antonio are currently adequate for the San Antonio area and the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center is on standby to ship units to the Fort Hood if needed.

The blood bank is asking for volunteers who are willing to donate blood for the Fort Hood area. The South Texas region also needs a daily supply of 600 units of blood for hospitals and emergency treatment facilities to help save lives of local patients with cancer and other diseases, organ transplants, surgeries and accident victims. Residents are asked to visit the Web site The South Texas Blood & Tissue Center to schedule an appointment.

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Kidney Transplant Surgery to be Broadcast Live via Twitter

I heard of Twitter about 2 years ago and joined up right away. It has become a huge success and I wonder if this live organ transplant broadcast portends of things to come. The world wide web has changed society and social networks such as Twitter are changing it even further.

East Valley Living

Children’s Medical Center in Dallas will be the first hospital to Twitter live from a transplant surgery

Dallas, TX - On Monday, May 18, 2009, Children’s Medical Center will Twitter live from the operating room while three-year-old John Gilbreath receives a life-saving kidney transplant from his hero of a dad. When Chris Gilbreath isn’t saving his son’s life, he’s busy saving others’ lives as a firefighter in Bonham, TX. This will be the first time any hospital has Twittered from a transplant surgery.

• Date: Monday, May 18


• Time: Starting at 6 a.m


• Twitter ID: http://twitter.com/ChildrensTheOne (@ChildrensTheOne)

Children’s will be Twittering from both Chris’s operating room at UT Southwestern University Hospital and John’s operating room at Children’s in an effort to educate the public and raise awareness of living organ donations.

Currently in the United States, nearly 85,000 people are on the waiting list for a kidney. Last year, Children’s performed the most pediatric kidney transplants in Texas.

Submitted on behalf of Children’s Medical Center
One of the largest pediatric healthcare providers in the nation, Children’s Medical Center is private, not-for-profit, and is one of the largest pediatric healthcare providers in the nation. As the only academic healthcare facility in North Texas dedicated exclusively to the comprehensive care of children from birth to age 18, Children’s provides patient care ranging from simple eye exams to specialized treatment in areas such as heart disease, hematology-oncology and cystic fibrosis. For more information, visit http://www.childrens.com.