Jeff Meyer, CEO of Northern California Blood Services.

The American Red Cross Northern California Blood Services Region is set to begin using an automated blood collection system – called ALYX – at its Oakland Blood Donation Center.
The ALYX Component Collection System ensures a steady and continuous blood supply for local patients by collecting two units of red blood cells from one donor. With the ALYX system, only red blood cells are collected; and the machine returns the other blood components – such as platelets and plasma – to the donor.
“Red blood cells are the most frequently used blood components,” said Jeff Meyer, CEO of Northern California Blood Services.
“ALYX allows people to safely double their red blood cell donations. So with each visit, donors can give more of what patients need the most,” he said.
Red blood cells are needed by almost every type of patient requiring a transfusion – including accident and trauma victims, and patients with blood disorders and other life-threatening diseases. Also, many patients – such as those suffering with sickle cell disease – require several red blood cell transfusions.
Double red cell donations are not a new concept. The Red Cross has been performing double red cell collection in the Northern California Region since 2002. But currently the agency has been using ALYX machines in this region only at mobile blood drives and the Pleasant Hill, Pleasanton and San Jose blood centers.
“We are looking to increase red blood cell collection in the Northern California Region,” Meyer said. “And by putting ALYX machines in more of our donor centers, we’re making it as convenient as possible for our donors to give those red blood cells. And that will help to ensure that we continue to meet the needs of patients in the Bay Area.”
In addition to meeting other blood donor qualifications, double red cell donors must also meet the following criteria. Men must be at least 5’1” and weigh at least 150 pounds. Women must be at least 5’5” and weigh at least 175 pounds. The machines are usually used for people with blood types O, A-negative or B-negative.
The local Red Cross region supplies blood to 30 Bay Area hospitals and must collect more than 300 pints of blood each day in order to meet hospital needs.
The Oakland Blood Donation Center is located at 6230 Claremont Ave. For information call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) or visit redcrossblood.org.

It was a high-profile New Jersey case brought by man who claimed he had been degraded and haunted by the “horrible” experience of being strip-searched twice by Burlington and Essex County jail officials in 2005.
On Monday, in an opinion with sweeping implications for the thousands of noncriminal offenders arrested across the country each year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the civil-rights claim of Albert Florence, ruling that detention centers do not need any suspicion or cause to strip-search a detainee.
“Maintaining safety and order at detention centers requires the expertise of correctional officials, who must have substantial discretion to devise reasonable solutions to problems,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy for the court’s majority.
In a 5-4 decision that split the court’s conservative and liberal wings down the middle, the dissenting justices wrote on Monday that a jail should first decide whether there is a reasonable belief a detainee is concealing something on him before forcing that detainee to be strip searched.
“(T)he seriousness of the offense may be a poor predictor of who has contraband,” Kennedy also wrote, as he sought to explain that on the ground-level at the nation’s rough-and-tumble jails, it would simply be “unworkable” to force officials to determine who may be a “suspicious” smuggler of contraband, and who may not.
The case itself was thrust into the national spotlight almost a year ago, when the high court announced that it would hear Florence’s claim. Litigators and experts realized immediately that the upcoming Supreme Court ruling would set clear national law on an important issue that would likely affect tens of thousands of people in the years to come who would be arrested for minor alleged offenses.
Indeed, there had been a split in recent years among the country’s powerful federal appellate courts, with several going against the trend of earlier years — ruling that, in their view, the “reasonable suspicion” test was not necessary, and that instead a blanket strip-search rule made the most sense.
Florence, of Bordentown and now 36, held a news conference in Newark last April with t civil rights litigator, Susan Chana Lask. “It’s disgusting, very disgusting,” he said through gritted teeth of the two strip-searches he’d endured. In one instance, he said in a near whisper, he was even ordered to squat down, expose his anus and cough.
Florence was arrested by the state police after his wife was pulled over for speeding and the officer noticed there was a warrant for Florence’s arrest, based on a supposed unpaid fine.
But, in fact, Florence, the father of four children and today a finance manager at a car dealership in Middlesex County, had already paid the fine.

Photo of: Melanie L. Campbell

The slayings of Trayvon Martin and other innocent teens were foremost on the hearts and minds of nearly 400 Black women from across the country that assembled recently in Washington, D.C. for the Black Women’s Roundtable (BWR) inaugural National Women of Power Summit, three days of down-to-earth discussions “Amplifying the Voices of Women and Girls in 2012 and Beyond.”
“It is important for the world to hear the voices of Black women from all walks of life on the Trayvon Martin issue and other issues that impact our community,” said Melanie L. Campbell, president and CEO of The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (The National Coalition) and convener of BWR. “We are mothers, sisters, aunts and wives of Black men being gunned down on the streets. Enough is Enough. Our voice will be heard today and on Election Day.”
To help amplify the voices of the physicians, lawyers, homemakers, labor workers and other attendees, the summit was broadcast live on the Internet (view at: http://tinyurl.com/744254g).
Also, during a town hall and rally were held calling for the arrest of Trayvon’s killer.. Emotions were high as several BWR members were just arriving from protests on Trayvon’s behalf in Sanford, Florida. Watch the video at (http://tinyurl.com/83ajt6v).
During her opening remarks for the BWR Mentor/Protégé Luncheon and BWR Leadership Awards, Susan L. Taylor, founder and of CEO of National CARES Mentoring Movement said,, “The village is on fire and we are the healing waters that our children are screaming for. We don’t have to do what Sojourner truth did… what Harriet Tubman, Mary McCloud Bethune or even Dorothy Height did. We just have to think critically, have an agenda and stand behind it. Number one is voting rights.”