Ah yes, the holiday season is in full swing. This is easily one of my favorite times of the year.
No matter how old I get, I still love ripping into presents on Christmas morning. I always watch as much of A Christmas Story as I possibly can, and let’s just say don’t get between me and my honey baked ham if you want to keep all your limbs!
But no matter what time of year it is, the need for blood is always there. Each day in America, just to refresh your memories, about 38,000 blood donations are needed for patients, and currently about seventy-five percent of Americans will need a blood transfusion at one point in their lives. With those kind of statistics it is always important to remember to donate if you can during the holidays. Let’s take a brief second to review the reasons why blood donations are typically needed with more urgency during this awesome and festive time of year.
- Local high schools and colleges are typically on holiday break.
The American Red Cross receives about twenty percent of all of its blood donations from high school and college students! Needless to say, when high schools and colleges across the nation go on holiday or winter break it really doesn’t help the efforts of local blood banks and centers trying to keep their own respective blood supplies at safe levels.
- As holiday travel increases so do accidents.
Around the holidays from Thanksgiving through New Year’s in the United States, traffic increaseson roads by anywhere from twenty-three to fifty-four percent! That is mind-boggling! Of course, when you put more people on the roadways together there are bound to be more accidents, and that is usually what happens. Blood is crucially needed for these types of situations, especially red cell donations for trauma situations and emergency surgeries.
- Many people feel they are too busy to donate!
We all know the holiday season is a very hectic time for many people – myself included. Many good folks, and even many regular blood donors, are trying the best they can to gear up for the in-laws, get the kids those special gifts and make sure the decorations are hung with care in anticipation of festivities. While all of this maybe true, once again, the need for blood never takes a holiday. That is why right now at Incept, as a Conversational Marketing Expert (CME) recruiting blood donors, we want to be as gentle (yet as assumptive) as we can to kindly get blood donors into their local donor centers to donate.
These are just a few of the main reasons why around this time of year your help is definitely needed. Just think of what one blood donation could do for someone else! Who knows, you could be helping someone’s family member be able to celebrate another year with them just from one whole blood donation. Plus, this is definitely a deed that is worthy of being put on a certain fat man’s nice list. So what is stopping you from donating if you’re eligible?
What are some other reasons that blood donations are slow during the holidays?