Donating blood is a significant help for cancer patients, transplant patients, and accident victims. It takes many donations of blood to help just one person in need. It can take up to five donors for someone who needs heart surgery, 50 donors to help save someone after a serious car accident, and eight donors a week to help someone with leukemia.
On Thursday, Oct. 17, UFV hosted Canadian Blood Services for a blood donation clinic. The blood donation clinic ran from 12 – 7 p.m. with the goal of reaching 108 donations. Students were able to make an appointment prior to this day online or could schedule one in person at the event.
There are many restrictions on donating blood. Some are to protect patients against blood-borne illnesses, including HIV. In Canada, there is a very low risk of becoming infected with HIV. According to Canadian Blood Services, in 2015, the “residual risk of HIV transfusion-transmitted infection was one in 21.4 million donations.”
There are a list of restrictions around who can donate blood, including age, when people have traveled and to where, health of the donor, and recent surgical procedures. Prescription medication use may also affect eligibility.
Arleen Asi and Nancy Bryan, the event coordinators from Canadian Blood Services, said that in some cases just one person might need about half the blood that gets donated from one clinic. I feel like if people were more aware of how much blood just one single person may need, maybe more people will see the importance of donating and will donate themselves.
Asi and Bryan helpful in answering any questions that anyone had and let students know that if they couldn’t donate that day that the Canadian Blood Services were coming back again on Wednesday, March 18.
“We have a constant need for blood. So, we are always looking to recruit new donors in Abbotsford and throughout the Fraser Valley. The challenge that we have is that not everyone can donate, so we ask everybody to go to blood.ca and look at the eligibility quiz online to discover if they are eligible,” said Bryan.
Depending on the number of donors that come to this event and the one in March, Canadian Blood Services might start coming three times a year to UFV.
“The most important thing is that there is a constant need for blood donors. It’s not on a shelf waiting to be used, it’s only there from a person coming in, keeping their appointment, and giving us their [time] and volunteering to donate their blood. It’s a huge impact that it makes to the recipient as well as the recipient’s family,” said Bryan.
At the end of the day, the blood clinic event had a total of 149 donors. The total amount of successful donations was 114, which was over the goal that the Canadian Blood Services had set. There was also a total of 43 successful new donors.
The Canadian Blood Services also have a Facebook page called Fraser Valley Blood Donation Events where they will highlight any other future events that will happen. Clinics are held throughout the Fraser Valley at least once a month. Some upcoming clinics are at Abbotsford Pentecostal Church on Mar. 28, and at Emmanuel Mennonite Church on Nov. 19, Dec. 12 and 17, Jan. 14, Feb. 11, and Mar. 10. For more information on the clinics, visit https://blood.ca/en.
Images: David Myles/The Cascade
