Southern Blood Services works to save lives through donation

A local specialty plasma center is helping to create life-saving therapies, especially for pregnant women.

Southern Blood Services was founded in 1999 and has three plasma collection facilities in Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Nashville.

At each location, high-quality enriched plasma is collected from donors and then processed into plasma-based therapies. Unlike a traditional plasma donation site, the primary focus is to collect antibodies from those who have developed them from pregnancy, blood transfusions or from vaccines and use them to help pregnant women.

The plasma is used to manufacture life-saving drugs such as Rho(D) Immune Globulin that is used to save the lives of babies whose blood types are incompatible with their mothers — also known as Hemolytic Disease of the Newborn.

Martina Sertell is the director of the Birmingham location at 3800 Colonnade Parkway, Suite 200, where she works with three other employees. She has been in the industry since 1989 and started this career after working for a bank.

“There’s not a degree or anything to teach you how to do this,” she said. “After a certain number of years there, I knew everything about it and started running the center in Birmingham in 2002.”

Sertell explained that when a mother has a negative blood type and her baby has a positive blood type, there is a risk that the mother’s antibodies will attack the baby’s blood, which can cause the baby to become sick or die.

Rho(D) immune globulin is a medicine that is used to immunize women with a negative blood type (Rh negative) during pregnancy and after childbirth to prevent their bodies from producing these antibodies. With the success of this medicine, the number of women with naturally existing antibodies (Anti-D) is dramatically reduced.

This program is open to women who are no longer able to have children (i.e., surgically sterile or post-menopausal) and may also include men who are Rh negative. Women who have a negative blood type, have had two or more pregnancies or a blood transfusion, or have been told they have an antibody can qualify to be donors.

Through a safe and highly tested procedure, small amounts of red blood cells from donors who match the recipient are introduced into the participant’s blood. The risks of the program are minimal, and all of the immunization donors are healthy individuals who undergo a physical, along with extensive screening and testing to assure the safety of the blood.

Those who are accepted into the program can safely donate plasma twice a week, and each donation takes about 45 minutes. Each donation produces 36 shots of Rho(D) immune globulin, which is enough to safeguard 18 babies.

Sertell said they have a lot of older donors in the program, including one donor who just turned 80 in June and has been donating for many years. She said there is no way to know how many babies she has saved throughout her life.

“I probably have 50 donors here, and the offices in Nashville and Tuscaloosa have around 35 to 40,” she said. “The same people continue to come in and donate.”

The favorite part of Sertell’s job is the people. She said the women who are donating are helping so many.

“These are women who realize how much they are helping other women have children,” she said. “They donate so this vaccine can be made ... people are amazing.”

For more information, call 205-967-8189 or visit southernbloodservices.com.