SANBS targets businesses for blood
She added that getting businesses involved helps with attracting regular and lapsed donors.
In a bid to attract donors within their communities, the South African National Blood Service (SANBS) staged a mobile blood drive at the CHM Volvo West Rand dealership.
The dealership opened its gates to the community on Saturday, 9 February, to allow easy access for local residents to donate blood.
The employees of the dealership led by example by being the very first to have blood drawn from their veins on the day.
Eugene Malan, the sales manager at Volvo, explained the reasons for bringing the blood drive to their business. “As a dealership, we are always involved in a lot of community work with schools, for instance, but this time around we decided to bring in the mobile blood drive so that we can donate blood as we are a human-centric brand that cares about human safety,” he explained.
Eugene also indicated that part of the cause was to assist Hoërskool Driehoek in the Vaal, which recently suffered a tragedy as the result of a collapsing overhead walkway.
Apart from having donor stands at various shopping centres, Jade Jacobs, the donor relations practitioner, expressed the importance of mobility in order to reach out to the community. “We are trying to make the blood drives more mobile by bringing them into the communities, where we can educate the residents about the importance of donating blood. To do this, however, we need businesses that have prominent footprints in the area to assist us to get the donors in,” she explained.
She added that getting businesses involved helps with attracting regular and lapsed donors.
When asked about the bloodstock level, Jade replied, “There is always a shortage of blood. We need to collect a minimum of 3 000 units per day in order to ensure a sufficient supply of blood in the country. However, we do struggle with this number, which is why we always rely on our regular donors to constantly supply us with blood”.
Follow the South African National Blood Service social media pages to learn about locations to donate blood.
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