Versiti Urges Donors With African Or Caribbean Ancestry To Give Rare ARO Blood For Sickle Cell Patients

Milwaukee Patient James Griffin Credits Rare Blood Donations For Life-Saving Transfusions

USA: A Milwaukee medical worker named James Griffin lives with sickle cell disease and depends on recurring blood transfusions to survive, a struggle shared by roughly 100,000 Americans. Griffin, who has endured hundreds of transfusions and thousands of hospital visits over four decades, says reliable donations have transformed his ability to work, travel and spend time with family. The story centers on the urgent need for specific blood types and the community efforts to secure them.

Sickle cell disease deforms red blood cells into a crescent shape that shortens their lifespan and can block blood vessels, causing severe pain and repeated hospitalizations. For many patients the safest blood for transfusion is an unusually rare phenotype identified in the coverage as AR0, present in only about 4% of donors overall but far more common—around 44%—among people of African or Caribbean ancestry. Those statistics drive a targeted donor recruitment effort to ensure compatible units are available when needed.

Versiti Blood Centers is intensifying outreach, including opening a blood center in Milwaukee’s historic Bronzeville neighborhood, to increase donations from communities most likely to carry the rare phenotype. The nonprofit’s work recognizes that blood cannot be manufactured and has a limited shelf life of 42 days, so timely procurement and matched donations are critical. Organ transplantation and tissue-matching programs face parallel challenges in finding compatible donors, making community engagement essential across transfusion and transplantation medicine.

Griffin now shares his experience publicly, giving speeches and writing about life with sickle cell to raise awareness and encourage donors. Local leaders and blood center officials emphasize that increasing participation among eligible donors who trace ancestry to Africa or the Caribbean will directly improve outcomes for patients reliant on chronic transfusion therapy. The drive to expand donor pools aims to reduce emergency shortages and give people like Griffin more uninterrupted years of life.

Video originally published on 2026-02-10 20:17:21