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Al Udeid Blood Transshipment Center keeps blood flowing through AOR

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Kia Atkins
  • 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar --  There is a small team of Airmen here responsible for providing the right blood product, to the right place, at the right time throughout the entire U.S. Central Command’s Area of Responsibility.

The Airmen conduct their critical and far reaching mission from the 379th Expeditionary Medical Group Blood Transshipment Center here. The BTC serves as the central point of storage and inventory assessment of all blood products in the AOR. The BTC ships and receives over 2,000 blood products a month which support more than 40 medical treatment facilities.

“After people give blood at a blood donor center, it gets sent to the Armed Services Whole Blood Processing Lab at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., where it is separated into different blood products such as red blood cells, plasma and cryoprecipitate,” said Airman 1st Class Jolonda Houston, 379th EMDG BTC medical logistician, deployed from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va. “After it is processed, it is shipped to us and then it is our responsibility to ship it to whoever needs it in the AOR.”

Not only do they store and inventory the blood, but they also ensure that it is always kept at the correct temperature.

“We check the temperature of every blood product that comes through here,” said Staff Sgt. Chayce Trotter, 379th EMDG noncommissioned officer in charge of the BTC, deployed from Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. “If it is not the correct temperature, it is destroyed because we can’t take a chance with blood products. If it becomes above temperature, there is a possibility for bacterial growth and that is a risk we are not willing to take, which is why we monitor all the products and ensure the correct temperature of every unit.”

The BTC Airmen are always standing-by to ship out blood products whenever and to wherever they are needed at any given time. The BTC can also get emergency blood product shipments packaged and transported anywhere in the AOR in less than 12 hours.

“We work nights, but when someone from a forward operating base calls and tells us they’re running low on blood products, regardless of the time of day, we come in, package the products and ship them out within an hour and it usually gets downrange in less than twelve hours,” Trotter said.

The blood products stored in the BTC here have already saved over 115 lives and supplied the needed blood products for over 700 critical transfusions in the AOR since July.

“All blood products in the AOR come through us,” Houston said. “We are the only active blood transshipment center out here, so when someone needs blood, they get it from us.”

Not only do BTC Airmen supply the blood products needed, they are also the largest supplier of dry ice in the AOR.

“Dry ice is how we keep a lot of our products frozen when we ship them out,” Trotter said. “So if somewhere else in the AOR doesn’t have the amount of dry ice needed to keep the products at the temperature they’re supposed to be, we ship them dry ice as well.”

With the entire AOR depending on the 379th EMDG’s BTC blood products, their mission here is critical.

“Everybody is depending on us, and it feels good to know that the products we provide here save lives,” Houston said.