 Have you ever wondered what happens to your blood after you donate it? You may have thought it's packed up and shipped off to a hospital straight away to go to needy recipients, but in actual fact, your donation is the start of a very long and complex process. When you donate blood, it's collected into specially designed bags that allow the components to be separated in a sterile way. The bags are carefully packed and sent from the donor centre to one of the four Australian Red Cross Blood Service processing centres. After checking and recording each donation into the computer system, it's weighed and samples are sent to be tested for various things. HIV AIDS, hepatitis B and C, syphilis and of course blood type. Every donation is spun at 4,200 rounds per minute in a centrifuge which separates the whole blood donations into three components, red cells, platelets and plasma. The heaviest components fall to the bottom and the lightest rise to the top. Then the blood bag goes onto a machine that squeezes the three separated components into individual bags. From this point in time, the blood goes on three different journeys and can potentially go to three different patients. The red blood cells collect at the bottom of the donation bag and are the product you usually see in hospitals. The platelets that form a layer in the middle of the bag are pulled with four other donations of the same blood group and then this mixture is processed in another centrifuge just to make sure we really got rid of any red blood cells that weren't separated the first time. The platelets are stored on room temperature controlled shells that are constantly moving to prevent clotting. And the final component from the top of the bag is yellow liquid plasma which is snap frozen. Plasma can be further processed to make 18 life-saving products including intravenous immunoglobulin which is used to help people with immune deficiencies and antibodies to help people who have been exposed to tetanus, chickenpox and hepatitis B. Once the donation has been given a good bill of health, it's sent off to the facility's blood bank holding area. Phone orders come into the blood banks mini call centre and the staff there find the products that are needed from the stocks on the shelves, in the fridges and freezers. The order is then packaged up and sent by courier to hospitals or other medical facilities. So, who gets these three types of lifesavers? Cancer patients are the main users of platelets, while people with burns and immune deficiencies often need plasma. Red blood cells can go to all sorts of patients, often trauma patients who have lost a lot of blood or women experiencing birthing complications. So, there you go. That's a bit more of an insight into what happens to your blood after donation.