Sydney Harbour Oysters RFC Plasma Drive

Plasma is the yellowish liquid part of your blood that holds all the other blood cells. It’s used in a whopping 18 different life-giving ways. Australia needs around 800,000 plasma donations each year to meet demands, and almost half of those donations come from just 30,000 donors.

This need for plasma has affected one of our own. Many of you will know that Oysters most capped player and co-founder Angus McClelland fell ill in 2024. We now know that Gus is battling a condition called Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP), which can cause chronic pain, loss of sensation and weakness of the limbs and difficulty moving.

Symptoms can be managed, and his quality of life improved through infusions of Intravenous Immunoglobulin (IVIg), which is made from human plasma. It can take up to 32 whole blood donations or 6 plasma donations to make a single IVIg treatment that is needed every two weeks. Donating plasma is similar to donating blood, however you can donate plasma every 2 weeks, instead of waiting the requisite 12 weeks between blood donations.

As such, we are doing a call out to those in our Oysters community to step up by donating plasma. We have set up a team blood drive through LifeBlood, with the goal of 50 donations by the end of the year. The leaderboard is already stacking up with ML of plasma donated, so book yours in today to get on the board!

Click here for information on how to join the drive

 Once you have signed up search for team name: Sydney Harbour Oysters RFC