American Red Cross and Georgia College’s Office of Community Service and Engagement hosted a blood drive on April 1 and April 3 in the Maxwell Student Union’s Donahoo Lounge, which was sponsored by the fraternities and sororities of Georgia College.
“I actually work for the Give Center,” said Sydney Bryant, a junior public health major. “So, I work at the Office of Community Engagement and Service. It’s great to see people come together for a common cause and to see people do something that might be scary, but they’re doing it for the common good.”
Anyone could sign up for a time slot to donate or to help with tabling or check-in. Shifts were an hour each, and some were scheduled for the week before the drive for volunteers to pass out flyers about the event.
Students and Faculty alike volunteered to donate. Next to the waiting area volunteers from National Marrow Donor Program sat at a table to inform those who wished to donate about the process of blood stem cell donations and help them to swab to be entered into the nationwide database of bone marrow donors.
American Red Cross donation stations were set up in the middle of the lounge, and Red Cross workers set up and cleaned each station after each donor. Donors got a health screening before donating to make sure it is safe to donate.
“They’ll get kind of like a mini physical,” said Brian Fern, senior account manager at Red Cross. “Their blood pressure will be checked. Their pulse will be checked. Their temperature as well as their hemoglobin will be checked. So, their iron level to make sure that they are healthy enough to donate blood.”
Some donors have been donating for years in hopes of doing their part.
“I am O positive, and I first donated blood in 2000,” said Cassie Lee Napier, a Georgia College graduate recruiter. “I’ve been trying to give, particularly at Georgia College, as much as possible. I think most recently what kind of lit another fire under me was my dad had to have transfusions after having kind of a health scare. And so, it was still a tough time, but it made it feel better to know that at least, you know, I’ve been trying to put into the greater bank.”
American Red Cross collects 4.5 million donations a year and these donations go to hundreds of patients each day. There were eight donation stations set up with Red Cross workers dressed in red and black helping to start the donation process. All the workers wore gloves and had conversations with the donors.
“Specifically, these donations will generally stay in Georgia,” Fern said. “We’re a net import state. So, the state of Georgia does not get enough donations to distribute to the hospitals that we serve in the state of Georgia. So, we get donations and units, blood units from other areas, typically the Northeast and the Midwest, that are actually brought here to supplement what we do. But we have had units that’ll go to South Carolina, Alabama, even down into Florida, Tennessee, those types of areas. Specifically, the units from here will go to Douglasville, where they’ll be processed.”
According to the American Red Cross site, to donate whole blood, people must be in good health and feeling well, be at least 16 years old in most states, and weigh at least 110 lbs.
Power Red donation donors must be in good health and feeling well, male donors must be at least 17 years old in most states, at least 5’1 ft tall and weigh at least 130 lbs and female donors+must be at least 19 years old, at least 5’3 ft tall and weigh at least 150 lbs.
The whole blood donations will be separated into platelets, plasma, and red cells in Douglasville. And then those components will go out to the hospitals from Douglasville to any of the surrounding areas.