According to the Community Blood Center website, only 37% of the U.S. population is eligible to donate blood but less than 10% do annually.
The Community Blood Center (CBC) is holding a Game Day Blood Drive this Friday and Saturday at the Dayton CBC Donation Center which is on 349 S. Main St.in Dayton.
Donations take place on Friday, Oct. 1 from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and on Saturday, Oct. 2 from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. If you register, you draw a ticket to win a Yeti Rambler tumbler with the CBC custom drop logo, or their “Blood Donor are the GOAT” tote bag, or water bottle. Even if you don’t win the drawing, you still get a “Cancer Fighters are the GOAT” t-shirt which honors October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, just for registering for the blood drive.
Mark Pompilio, who works for Dayton CBC in PR/Marketing said that: “We are hoping to get around 100-150 blood donors along with others who are donating plasma.”
With not a lot of news about this Game Day Blood Drive, Mark Pompilio hopes that people will come and give blood because of the challenges the CBC faces. One of the challenges is the lack of O negative blood the CBC has.
“With the shortage of O negative blood, we are in what we call the red, which means we don’t have that much left,” said Pompilio. “Which is why we hope people come out and donate.”
Another challenge that the Dayton CBC faces is COVID-19 and that they can’t go to schools, churches and other places to collect blood as they normally did. They are hoping to start going back to places like Sinclair, which is having a blood drive on Nov. 15 in the library.
“With COVID being around, it impacts blood collection in many different ways,” said Pompilio
According to the CBC website, blood drives hosted by companies, schools, places of worship and civic organizations supply roughly half of all blood donations across the U.S. This statistic is why the Community Blood Center needs to have a good outcome, so that it can help make up for these missed places and events.
Even with little news about this event and COVID-19 still around, according to Mark Pompilio: “The registration so far has started off good.”
Spread the word to donate blood at the Dayton CBC all month so that hospitals around Dayton can get the blood to help kids and adults who might be in desperate need of a certain type of blood type. Blood donation only takes about an hour of your time and it saves lives.
Nick Thomas
Intern