Blood drive targets HWT Road businesses
BUSINESSES from Half-Way-Tree to Cross Roads in St Andrew are being targeted in the 2014 LIME Foundation Blood Drive to collect some 100 units on August 29.
With at least 55,000 units of blood needed annually and only about 30,000 being received each year, the LIME Foundation has partnered with the National Blood Transfusion Service to bolster and encourage a culture of voluntary blood donation.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Kevin Harvey, who spoke at the launch at the Blood Bank’s offices in Kingston on Thursday, said voluntary blood donation is high on the agenda. “Our aim is to have more persons donating voluntarily on a regular basis rather than just say, replacement donations that we have when persons are ill and family members come to donate,” Dr Harvey said. “We aim to have 100 per cent voluntary donation by 2020.”
He thanked the LIME Foundation for its commitment as a corporate citizen and appealed for more companies and organisations to come on board.
Head of the LIME Foundation Errol Miller said the blood drive has a primary target, but that anyone can come out next Friday and donate blood.
“We are targeting the people who you can say are our immediate neighbours — all the businesses between Cross Roads and Half-Way-Tree — but of course anybody else can come in and donate,” said Miller.
“… We’re doing this… because the need is great and we want to try and do what we can to help,” said Miller.
The LIME Foundation, Miller said, will also be donating 16 laptops to the Blood Bank, which the chief medical officer said would go a far way in upgrading the donor coordination system that is now mostly paper- based.
The LIME Foundation has also included an incentive and rewards programme for the blood drive, which will see everyone who donates on August 29 between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm receiving a $100 phone card. Also, the recruiter — the person who has taken the lead in engaging and soliciting potential donors ahead of next Friday and follow through to actual donation — will win a smartphone, and the organisation with the most donors will win the ‘Life Saver Trophy’.
