Bournemouth leads 2012 Blood Drive

Blood donor charities are beginning to worry that 2012 could be a bad year for donations after events like the Royal wedding that brought down donations by nearly 1000 people. Bournemouth City is trying to make a quick start by introducing the ‘Make mine a pint’ donor drive to bring about more donations for 2012.

Bournemouth’s ‘Make mine a pint’ blood donor campaign kicked off with many donations being given to raise dwindling stocks of blood.

The National Blood Service has calculated that for certain types of blood, there were only 236 pints remaining after the Christmas period. Other more common types, like A Positive, have fewer than five and half days of stock left.

A spokesperson for the National Blood Service said: “Only 5% of adults who can give blood, actually donate.

“After Christmas and other festive periods stocks get lower so we try to boost the levels with campaigns much like Bournemouth’s “Make mine a pint.”

The National Blood Services statistics show that over festival periods last year the number of donations had lowered by nearly 1000 volunteers.

To help boost these figures and the stocks the National Blood Service called on campaigns like Bournemouth’s ‘Make mine a pint’ to remind members of the public of the reasons why it is necessary to give blood on a regular basis, especially if you have a rare blood type.

To help campaign for blood donations the National Blood Service takes donations via its 89 fixed sites across the United Kingdom and 22 of its mobile vans that travels to over 800 different locations in the United Kingdom each year.

NHS mobile blood donation image via wikipedia

The blood service also holds over 23,000 different donation sessions a year throughout the country, in its mobile van centres alone.

Around 35% of all blood donations will be use by victims of cancer and every pint can be used to help save three lives. The ‘Make mine a pint’ campaign will taking place at Bournemouth United Reformed Hall from January 27th for six days, and will be running in Dorset until April 25th 2012.

 

Related Media:
National Blood Service home page

NHS website for blood donation

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