ROBERTSDALE, Ala. — Robertsdale Elementary School held its first Red Cross Blood Drive on Wednesday, January 26 from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and collected 62 units with 16 being first-time donors.

Lauren Sanders, coordinator of the drive, was very pleased with the turnout and thankful for everyone who came out to support the school.

“We had 78 people to sign up and even had some who didn’t sign up come out to give. The Red Cross workers didn’t leave until 6 p.m. because of all the people who came. It was pretty successful, I think,” Sanders said.

Elaine Howell, Elementary School Account Manager for the Mobile blood services office, said they had 54 volunteers (parents, students and 12 Red Cross staff members) helping with the drive and the peer helpers from South Baldwin Center for Technology sponsored the drive and also volunteered by handing out juice and cookies to the donors. Visions Bank, Subway and Winn-Dixie donated the cookies and juice for the drive, Howell said.

“We came out and talked to the students on January 13 about the importance of donating blood and what the blood is used for, and tried to encourage them to get as many people as possible to come out to the drive. We compared the donors to super heroes and did some activities with kool-aid to demonstrate how blood helps your body,” Howell said.

Students who recruited a donor who gave will receive a thank you gift, a certificate of appreciation and a pizza party.

Because of all the severe winter weather across the country, 14,000 blood donations have been canceled and has crippled the national blood supply greatly, prompting the Red Cross to issue a Winter Alert, according to the Red Cross website.

n an article published on the Red Cross website, officials said “the winter storms have already made a huge impact on the national inventory management system and in fact, they haven’t seen its blood supply drop this dramatically at this time of year over the past ten years.”

“All donations at this point are vital and critical but we are always looking for type O because it’s the universal type. We need to have a three day supply of all types at all times. That’s why these drives are so important,” Howell explained.

According to the American Red Cross web site, there ae eight blood types (O positive and negative, A positive and negative, B positive and negative, AB positive and negative) and “O” is the one most often requested by hospitals, and a single car accident victim can require as many as 100 pints of blood.

Also, blood is perishable and has no substitute. Red blood cells have a shelf life of only 42 days and platelets only five days so they must be replenished constantly.

Some other Red Cross facts include:

Five million patients in the United States receive blood in a year.

Less than 38 percent of the U.S. population are eligible to give blood.

9.5 million blood donors in the U.S. each year.

Average adult has about 10 pints of blood in his body.

A donor can give every 56 days.

Only seven percent of people in the U.S. have O-negative, most common blood type.

Only three percent have AB-poisitive, universal plasma type.

The American Red Cross blood program began in 1940 and it supplies approximately 40 percent of the nation’s blood supply. It also gets 80 percent of its donations from mobile blood drives, which number about 200,000 each year, according to the web site.