PHL Red Cross moves to new Mandaluyong facility

The Philippine Red Cross (PRC) opened a new facility in Mandaluyong City which is poised to serve more than just a blood center.

The new PRC Tower at the corner of EDSA and Boni Avenue houses not only the biggest blood center in the Philippines, but also an operations center and other facilities and equipment for communications and disaster response and management, according to a PRC Facebook post.

"This is the first ever building of this kind to be acquired by the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) and it represents the modernization of the PRC and its transformation into an organization that is capable of providing a wide range of services to make it the premier humanitarian organization in the country," according to PRC Chairman Richard Gordon.

The blood center occupies two floors of the building and is open 24/7. The center can store up to 4,000 units of blood in a walk-in blood bank refrigerator and five floor-type blood bank refrigerators.

The PRC Tower National Blood Center also has state-of-the-art testing machines for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B and C, syphilis, and malaria.

It is equipped with five apheresis machines. Each machine receives blood taken from a patient or donor and separates it into its various components: plasma, platelets, white blood cells, and red blood cells.,

Gordon added that PRC was working on having the PRC National Blood Center in Mandaluyong and the rest of PRC's blood centers International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certified, just like the National Blood Center in the old national headquarters in Manila. — DVM, GMA News