Every two seconds a person in America is in need of a blood transfusion. Since 1994, Sedro-Woolley High School has partnered with Bloodworks Northwest. Each year multiple blood drives at the high school are held.

  Bloodworks Northwest–previously known as Puget Sound Blood Center–is a community based nonprofit organization. It takes eight hundred donors a day to maintain blood supply to 90 Northwest hospitals.

  According to Sasha Seiden, donor resources representative, the goal of a high school blood drive is to inspire and build the next generation of blood donors through student engagement, and to help meet the needs of local hospitals and patients who need new blood products throughout the Pacific Northwest. For every high school student who donates, Bloodworks Northwest hopes that they will become a life-long donor.

  Typically high school students donate whole blood cells; the most traditional way to donate. Aside from that, you can donate platelets, plasma, double red cells, and cord blood. To be eligible to donate any blood in general, you must be over sixteen years old and over a certain weight to make sure you don’t go into a vasovagal reaction. You can get any other information from Bloodworksnw.org.

  After whole blood is collected–which takes on average about an hour–it travels in a refrigerated van to the Bloodworks lab in Renton. Then they separate the platelets, plasma, and red blood cells. This is how a single unit of whole blood can help as many as three patients in need. Those in need include cancer patients, trauma victims, and patients undergoing surgeries. Some patients receiving blood as soon as twenty four hours after the blood is collected and analyzed.

  High schools account for about twenty percent of blood collected during the school year. Bloodworks also provides a scholarship program for high school students who plan and organize a community blood drive.

  This year the goal for high school donated blood is to collect sixty units of whole blood–which can help up to one hundred and eighty people in need. The most blood donated from Sedro-Woolley High School students is seventy one units of whole blood in October of 2016. This year the total was seventy eight units of whole blood donated.

  There will be another blood drive in the spring. Bloodworks recruiter Sasha Seiden has high hopes for the many donors at the high school, and encourages many new donors to join each drive. Seiden organizes all the drives at the many locations they have each month.

  Blood Drives can help hundreds of people, just hours after the blood is donated. So please help and donate blood at the next local Northwest Bloodworks Blood Drive.