GIVING BACK
About two-thirds of the population is eligible to give blood—but only three percent do.
Blood Donation 101 by LINDA HOLDERNESS
Your holiday gifts may be unwrapped, your decorations back in storage, but your spirit of giving doesn’t need to end just yet.
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stylemg.com
| JANUARY 2022 |
Why not start the new year by bestowing the gift of life? January is National Blood Donor Month, and giving blood is one of the most impactful acts of kindness. The need is especially critical now, says Victoria Wolfe, communications manager at Vitalant—a nationwide nonprofit blood services provider with numerous local locations—because donations, already low from the pandemic, fall off during the busy holidays, while the need does not: Someone in the U.S. requires blood every two seconds. Nearly five million of us will need a transfusion this year. Transfusions often correlate with trauma, as after an accident, but Wolfe points out that many other medical conditions also may require blood: caesarean births with complications, for example, or major surgery, internal bleeding, sickle cell anemia, some cancer treatments, and more. "The need is way more common than you would expect," Wolfe says. She herself required 300 units of blood during treatment for leukemia (from which she is now recovered). About two-thirds of the population is eligible to give blood—but only three percent do. This means, Wolfe says, that “a safe and plentiful blood supply rests on the shoulders—or maybe in the veins—of a mighty few." Donors must be
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Photo ©Anna Jurkovska - stock.adobe.com.
Gift of Life
