PITTSBORO – Chatham Community Library will be hosting a community blood drive with the American Red Cross next month. The blood drive will be held in the Holmes Family Room on Wednesday, October 11, between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. The library is located at 197 NC-87 in Pittsboro.
According to the Red Cross, a 25% drop in donations since August, coupled with back-to-back months of climate-driven disasters, is the result of the strained blood supply.
Donors of all blood types are urgently needed, and there is an emergency need for platelet donors and O-blood donors to make an appointment to give now to ensure patients across the country continue to receive critical medical care.
The Red Cross is closely monitoring all potential hurricanes, which may further hamstring the organization’s ability to collect life-saving blood products during this critical time. Just a couple of weeks ago, Hurricane Idalia slammed into the southeastern U.S., causing more than 700 units of blood and platelets to go uncollected. This compounds other challenges experienced by the organization during the summer to collect a sufficient number of blood products, as many Americans engage in one of the busiest travel seasons on record and back-to-school activities.
“For so many patients living with urgent medical care needs, crises don’t stop with natural disasters,” said Dr. Pampee Young, chief medical officer of the American Red Cross. “In fact, in some instances, the stresses of a disaster can lead to a medical crisis for some individuals battling sickle cell disease. The need for blood is constant. Every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs blood—an often invisible emergency that the rest of the world doesn’t see behind closed hospital doors. Now, that urgency has only heightened.”
Currently, blood product distributions to hospitals are outpacing the number of blood donations. Approximately 2,500 hospitals and transfusion centers across the country rely on the Red Cross to collect 12,5000 blood donations each day to meet the needs of their patients.
To make an appointment to give blood at the Chatham Community Library, individuals may visit tinyurl.com/BloodDriveCCL, scroll down to the blood drive for October 11 and click “see times.” There are 22 available appointment times.
Residents are also encouraged to visit the library’s website at www.chathamlibraries.org or contact them at (919) 545-8084 for more information about this event and future programs.