"I thought it would be something to do that might help other people," Mr Polaschek said. "You never know, I might need help one day myself."
Wairarapa isn't short on generous donors such as Mr Polaschek, though three times fewer red blood cell donations were made in the year ending September 30 than in the previous year.
New Zealand Blood Service's area manager for the Central Region Alastair Neill said the drop reflected a decrease in demand for red blood cells and how often the service was able to get to the region, rather than a reduction in willing donors.
"We have to consider our overall operating expenses. How often we can get to an area and so how many donations we get is very much driven by a cost per unit basis."
A philosophy of having appointments had been around for years but the service had been ramping up the number of bookings they had to have more control and so be more efficient, he said.
"We don't want waste - it's not the right thing to do with taxpayer money - so we try to target what we actually need.
"It's really good if we can send out a message saying we're short on A+ blood, if you have A+ blood and can come down on [Wednesday], get in touch."
Nationally, the number of red blood cell donations has decreased considerably in the past five years.
From October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009 there were 152,098 donations. This total rose slightly for the same period the following year and then dropped to 148,555 from 2010 to 2011.
The most significant drop was from 2012 to 2013 - down 13,490 to 129,502. In the past year, donations dropped again to 120,006.
New Zealand Blood Service spokeswoman Asuka Burge said donation numbers had dropped as demand for red blood cells had decreased.
Demand dropped due to a blood conservation project initiated by district health boards and the Blood Service in 2010, she said.
The project encouraged medical practitioners to reduce the number of transfusions, as it was found patients were frequently being over- transfused and so were being unnecessarily exposed to risks of adverse effects.
Led by the motto "why use two when one will do?", the campaign recommended practitioners issued only one bag of red blood cell units to a patient and then reassessed before issuing another, rather than immediately issuing two bags as they had historically done, Ms Burge said.
Another project, which supported the message "blood is a gift, use it wisely", ran at the same time to improve the chain of blood sent to hospital blood fridges, and to educate practitioners that overnight transfusions in stable patients were not appropriate.
District health boards saved money, nursing staff saved time and the number of adverse reactions experienced by patients decreased, according to a follow-up report by transfusion medicine specialist Richard Charlewood.
Donor centres in Napier and Nelson were also shut down in response to the decrease in demand, Ms Burge said.
Meanwhile, demand for plasma-only blood had increased, she said.
Donor centres for plasma are at Epsom in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
The next Wairarapa blood drive is at the Masterton Town Hall at 1pm on Wednesday.
