By Albert Tang, staff writer
The FVHS Red Cross club, working with the University of California, Irvine, held a blood drive open to students and staff last week.
Like all blood drives, the FVHS blood drive was organized as way for high school students, aged 17 and older, to help people who need blood transfusions.
Participating in the blood drive allows students to physically improve the lives of sick people across the nation by allowing caregivers to replace lost blood in the injured and sick or unhealthy blood in the ill.
“No other clubs on campus have something that impacts those in need so directly. Sure, there can be fundraisers, but the blood drive helps students actually feel like they are help others. Since there is no substitute for blood, this is vital for those in need,” said Red Cross Activties Director, Ryan Cheung (’16).
The event was organized by the school’s Red Cross club along with nurses from UCI. The UCI staff drove their portable Blood Donation van, named the “Blood-mobile,” to FVHS and collected a pint of blood from each of the volunteers.
“UCI contacts us when they will come to our campus to do the event. Then we set up the posters and pretty much get the word out to as many as we can that the blood drive is coming,” Cheung said.
During the drive, club members helped the UCI staff with the administrative aspect of donating blood.
“We help sign up people who are are interested and eligible by getting their name, ID, and period that they want to donate,” Cheung stated.
After the blood is collected, it is taken to a collection center for processing. There, it is centrifuged into its separate components, such as red cells, plasma, and white blood cells and tested for bacterial contamination. Afterwards, the collected blood is shipped to one of the three American Red Cross national laboratories and undergoes dozens of tests for blood type and disease. If a test is positive, the blood sample is destroyed and the donor is notified. Otherwise, the clean blood samples are sent to hospitals nationwide to help save lives.
