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Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

also financial: some people rely on blood donations for extra cash to pay for food and bills. Though, there are better ways to give people opportunities…

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People get paid to donate blood?

I believe you can get paid for donating your plasma components.

In the US, yes.

Not paid to donate blood, as far as I know, but plasma. I did this a handful of times in college for extra cash.

They still pierce you to remove blood and you get paid for it, don't you? I don't think "it's just the plasma" makes much of a difference.

It does with respect to how frequently you're able to donate. In the UK, blood donation can be no more frequent than once every 12 weeks (for men). Plasma can be donated up to once every 2 weeks.

They pierce you to remove blood and put it back. You get to keep all the non-plasma components - blood cells, etc.

So...? The ethical (political? social? moral?) component seems the same to me.

Germany does.

What, where? Most of blood donations are made through the Red Cross, they don't give people anything.

If you wait for the next blood donation to be advertised for you, it will be from the Red Cross or similar and you get a free sandwich or something to that effect. If you actively search for options to donate, chances are it will be at the local hospital that will pay you around 20€ for it and offer much more frequent options.

Germany doesn't. There are some for-profit options for donating blood in Germany but the most widely know way to give blood is with the German Red Cross, which does not pay donors unless you consider a small meal or the occasional swag (e.g. squishy balls) "payment".

As I understand it, some hospitals offer payment for blood donations but if you want to get paid the most reliable options are probably pharmaceutical companies. By number of donors, both are probably eclipsed by the Red Cross though, which by its nature heavily relies on volunteer work.

As a German, I now several people here who donate blood and get paid money for it (e.g. here https://www.blutspendedienst-owl.de/blutspende.html), but more people do indeed donate plasma since they get more money per session and can donate more often (e.g. here: https://www.cslplasma.de/faqs but I don't see their monetary rewards on the page anywhere).

Somebody on Reddit recently did collect what one gets for donating blood in different areas of Germany: https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/xoqyay/aufwandsentsch%C...

What you can see from that is that a "Aufwandsentschädigung" of ~20€ is pretty common.

We're not disagreeing. These are (university) hospitals and corporations. I've seen numbers indicating that 70% to 80% of blood donations in Germany are done via the German Red Cross. The Red Cross does not pay money for blood donations.

Pre-COVID the German Red Cross often would have a buffet lunch typically consisting of sandwiches and fruit for donors. Since then they seem to have moved to prepackaged lunches and branded giveaways. But never cash money.

Yeah, sounds to me like one of those cases where it's best to have a social reward rather than a financial one.

You don't get paid to donate blood, you get paid for selling your plasma to pharmaceutical companies.

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