G/T Sponsors Blood Drive
By Courtney Thompson
Every two seconds someone in the United States needs blood. More than 38,000 blood donations are needed every day. The number of patients who receive blood in the U.S in a year is about 4.5 million.
Eighty percent of the blood donations given to the Red Cross are collected at mobile blood drives set up a community organizations, high schools, colleges, etc. Every year, the gifted and talented program has a blood drive at Marmaduke High School more than once. In October, we held our first blood drive for the school year. We had over sixty people give blood.
If you began donating blood at age seventeen and donated every fifty-six days until you reached seventy-six, you would have donated forty-eight gallons of blood, potentially helping save over one-thousand lives!
For some people, it was the first time to give blood. “Giving blood for the first time really made me feel special. The fact that since I gave blood, it’s going to help save someone’s life, really means a lot to me,” said Trevor Blanchard.
Jordan Brannon said, “I give blood because it makes feel good to know that I just helped someone out.”
Kyle Gardener said that the reason he gives blood is “Because I believe the government wants to map my DNA sequence in order to recreate the perfect human specimen.”
When you give blood, you give someone another laugh, another hug, and another chance at life.