Staff
While still several weeks away, appointments have been a little slow for the upcoming spring blood donor clinic here.
As such, the Canadian Blood Services is encouraging people to make an appointment today.
The two-day clinic will run Tuesday, April 12 from 4:30-8:30 p.m. and again on Wednesday, April 13 from noon-3 p.m. and 5-8:30 p.m. at Fort Frances High School.
Harvey Heather, community development co-ordinator for CBS, said yesterday that the clinic’s goal is 300 units of blood, which equals to almost 400 donors (the number of donors usually does not equal the number of units).
“It’s been very slow so far,” Heather admitted. “Until we do the phoning, which is still a little over three weeks away, a lot of people don’t book.
“But it does help if people can book earlier,” he stressed.
“For people who have donated before, we actually know their blood types, so we can look at that list and say, ‘Okay, we’ve got this many type O’s, this many type A’s booked,’” Heather added.
“We can focus our calling on the ones we’re not sure we’re going to have enough of for blood types,” he explained.
“It helps us focus our calling a little better and make sure we have the right type of blood on hand.”
Last April, the spring blood donor clinic here saw a two-day total of 358 donors, who gave 307 units of blood to help up to 929 patients in hospitals in Northwestern Ontario and Manitoba.
Interested donors can make an appointment by calling 1-888-2DONATE (1-888-236-6283) or by visiting www.blood.ca
If prospective donors, or active ones for that matter, want to know why it’s so important to donate blood, they should check out www.thankyourdonor.ca
This is a website where people who have received blood, either themselves or family members, have posted stories about how much they appreciate blood donors and why it was so important that blood was there for them when they needed it.
Here’s some interesting facts about blood donations:
•One in every two Canadians either will need blood, or knows someone who will, yet only one Canadian in 60 currently donates blood.
•CBS looks after 91 hospitals in Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario.
•It’s estimated that 75,000 new donors are needed this year in Canada.
