The American Red Cross needs more than 900 units of type O blood each day to meet the needs of patients in hospitals in this area. The American Red Cross of Union County will be hosting an “O” drive at the Red Cross on Friday December 28th. The chapter is located at 608 East Franklin Street in Monroe. The drive will be from 1:30 pm to 6:00 pm, and donors will receive an American Red Cross long sleeved t-shirt as a thank you. All donations are welcome, but a special plea is being made to type O donors. Approximately 44% of the population has type O blood, making it the most common blood type. Almost half of all daily hospital requests are for type O. In addition, type O negative blood is used in trauma situations to stabilize patients until their blood can be crossmatched. Type O negative blood is often used to save the lives of premature babies.

Other life saving events in Union County during the holiday:

• The Enquirer Journal will host a drive at their office at 500 West Jefferson Street on Thursday December 20th from 2 to 6:30 pm
• Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse is hosting a drive on Friday December 21st from 2 to 6:30 pm at their store on Roosevelt Blvd.
• Faith United Methodist is hosting a drive at the church located at 9708 Faith Church Road in the Lake Park Community on Sunday December 23 from 12 noon to 4:30 pm

All blood drives are open to the public and all blood types are needed. Blood donors must be 17 years of age or older, weigh at least 110 pounds and be in general good health. The entire collection process takes about an hour. A blood donation can be made every 56 days.

For information call the Union County Chapter at 704-283-7402.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 11:06 am and is filed under Bloggers - Health Issues, Bloggers - Monroe/Union County, Health and Wellness, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.