Red Cross Club organizes blood drive

By Nathan Woo,
Bluedevilhub.com Staff–

The Davis High Red Cross Club hosted their annual spring blood drive on Mar. 6, attracting over 70 students to donate.

“They prick your finger; that’s the first time you bleed, to check for iron deficiency, because if you don’t have enough iron you can’t donate, which is mostly only a problem with girls […] Then they cinch your arm to try and find the vein, and it’s really smooth how they put it in. You barely feel it. Then you wait for a while and then you’re done,” senior Kelly Strickland said.

This blood drive was the second of the school year, following the annual fall blood drive also put on by the DHS Red Cross Club.

“We have a week in the quad where we have kids who want to donate sign up, and then on the day of the drive we have them bring their student ID and permission slip if they are under 18,” club president senior Dean Boswell said.

After many signups, the students have to go through a screening process, which includes a blood test, to see if they have any diseases or are iron deficient.

The blood drive nurses are contacted by the school nurse to help set up the blood drive, which was held in the South Gym for the first time; normally it is held in bloodmobiles in the staff parking lot.

“It’s pretty fun. I actually like high school drives, because you get to introduce a lot of new donors to donating blood, and most of them are very excited and just want to help,” head nurse Asia Houston said.

Houston believes the high school donors are more prone to passing out and having negative reactions to gi ing blood, but there are preventative measures in place to stop these reactions from occurring.

“A lot of [students] think one bottle of water is a lot of water, but three to four bottles is what we’d like them to drink. […] A lot of times we keep them in the chair for longer, for five minutes instead of only a minute like regular donors, and for refreshments we have them stay for 15 minutes instead of the regular 10,” Houston said.

The Red Cross Club does several other events throughout the year.

“Besides the two [blood drives] we did […] Holiday for Heroes, so we got a banner from Red Cross with Happy Holidays on it, and our job was to get as many comments and signatures on it to send it to soldiers to appreciate them.” Boswell said. The club also organized a fundraising campaign through Red Cross ribbons.