(Spirit Lake)– You’ll have the opportunity to donate the gift of life later this month. Lifeserve Blood Center will hold blood drives October 24th Spirit Lake from 1:00 until 6:00 pm at the Dickinson County Community Building and October 27th from 9:30 am until 2:00 pm at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Milford. Shay Willis, Director of Marketing and Public Relations with Lifeserve Blood Center, says blood supplies are typically low at this time of year…
“We’ve also noticed here in our region unfortunately we’ve had some of our hospitals seeing patients experiencing trauma and in those cases unfortunately those patients need lots of units of blood. And so just this week we noticed our supply, at least five of our eight blood types critically low. And so it’s so important, especially as we head into the fall and winter months that during these nicer Iowa months, if you will, that we get donors out at our blood drives and our donor centers giving the gift of life because as we all know once we get into the winter, colder months, it’s harder to want to get out and do anything plus we run into a couple of more big holidays. So we really look in October and November, maybe hopefully even early December for people to come out and roll up their sleeve and give the gift of life.”
Shay says those planning to give blood are encouraged to make an appointment in advance…
“It typically makes the whole process a lot easier both for the donor and for our staff. People can call our 800 number, 800-287-4903 or they can go online to our website, lifeservebloodcenter.org and you can schedule there. And if you are wanting to schedule at one of the two in the Spirit Lake area, just look for the date and look for the location, or when you call specify which drive you’re wanting to donate at and our team will make sure that you get scheduled appropriately.”
Lifeserve provides blood products to 161 hospitals primarily in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, including several locally.
