VALDOSTA —
While many spent Wednesday cooking out and watching fire works, there was a select group of people who celebrated Independence Day by donating the gift of life.
“Some may say, why be open?” said Dick Rockey, a donor recruitment representative for the American Red Cross Valdosta Donor Center. “Well, we need blood even on the Fourth of July.”
Even though citizens all across the country paused to salute America, disaster and sickness never pause and thus, neither can the efforts of the Red Cross.
“In the United States, out of the entire population, only 38 percent of people are eligible to give blood,” said Rockey. “Of that 38 percent, only 8 percent of people actually give blood.”
The American Red Cross recently issued a national blood appeal. The severe storms in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic areas have severely impacted the ability to build the blood inventory back up to sufficient levels in many locations. South Georgia was not exempt from this impact.
Power outages, fallen trees and other storm damage have left blood donors unable to get to blood donation centers and many mobile blood drives have been canceled due to weather conditions as well. This has resulted in the shortfall of nearly 1,700 units of blood and platelets, according to a press release from the Red Cross.
Rockey stated that the weather was just an addition to the hardship as it is typical for the summer months to be slow in regards to donations.
“Twenty percent of blood collected (locally) comes from high schools and the college,” said Rockey.
With kids out of school, people on vacation and the colleges with lower enrollment in the summer months, a lot of the donors that the Valdosta Red Cross depends on are simply not around. In addition, Independence Day further strains the situation as many businesses are not open to hold blood drives and a lot of their employees are on extended vacations.
“The summer months are always hard,” said Rockey.
Thousands of blood donations are needed each and every day to meet the needs of hospitals and patients.
“With the shortage, I need to have a blood drive every single week in Valdosta,” said Rockey.
According to Rockey, the Southern Blood Services Region must collect 1,200 pints daily to meet the needs of more than 120 hospitals. The Valdosta Donor Center alone needs to collect 789 units of blood to meet demand for the months of July, August and September. Every donation counts as each pint of blood goes towards saving more than one life.
In order to generate more donors Wednesday, the Valdosta Red Cross offered incentives to get people in the door. Donors not only got a free T-shirt, a Pepsi product beverage, a bag of candy and a coupon for a free meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken, but in addition donors were automatically entered to win tickets to an Atlanta Braves baseball game. The Red Cross also hosted a mobile blood drive in the parking lot of the Valdosta Mall.
“We’re working harder,” said Rockey. “The same things are always expected, it’s just trying to get more of what you already do.”
By noon, the Valdosta donation center alone had more than 25 people come in seeking to donate blood and/or platelets and a little more than 20 of them were eligible to give.
The American Red Cross is still in dire need of blood and platelets. To donate, visit the Valdosta Donor Center located at 2517 Bemiss Road. For more information call 1-(800)-448-3543 or visit www.givelife.org.
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Red Cross team supervisor Lena Thomas prepares Times reporter Quentin Plummer to donate blood Wednesday. The Red Cross has issued an emergency appeal for donors. Brittany D. McClure
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