1000 donations are needed per week to maintain the blood needed to save lives in Manitoba.

That was the word from Steve Raizen, the Territory Manager for Canadian Blood Services, who made a presentation to Portage la Prairie City Council Monday night.

He says that donation levels are strong in Portage, but the numbers are not quite where they'd like to see them.

"In Portage, our collection target or our collection goal would be 120 donations every time we're here, and so that's at our monthly donation events," says Raizen. "Usually we're pretty close to that goal, but not consistently throughout the year."

He says blood is needed every minute of every hour of every day.

"More than 50 per cent of us will know somebody who will need blood or blood products in their lifetime," says Raizen. "Only four per cent of Canadians donate so we have that pretty large gap between the need for blood donors and the number of people who are actually donating."

He says he wanted to get support from council to help raise awareness for the monthly events, in hopes of getting more first-time donators.

More information about the programs can be found at Blood.ca.