On Tuesday, April 1, the Red Cross held a blood drive in Ross Sports Center at St. Michael’s College. A marrow drive, where volunteers can be added to an international bone marrow registry with just a simple swab of the cheek, was also held in conjunction with the event.
Saving lives
MOVE, Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts, has worked with the Red Cross during blood drives since 1959, Red Cross representative Dave Carmichael says . Each year the school hosts three drives during the academic year and one during the summer.
According to Carmichael, the Red Cross left St. Michael’s on Tuesday with a successful 104 pints of donated blood.
Because the Red Cross provides so much help and materials, blood drives are an easy program to run, says Mike Stefanowicz, MOVE Core Team member for special events.
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Students and community members fill out paperwork while waiting to donate at the blood drive in the Ross Sports Center. (Photo by Emily Rose) |
MOVE is responsible for organizing the donors and volunteers. Volunteers run the canteen, which provides food and drinks donated by local businesses. They also work as donor aids, transporting the blood from the donation site to the collection area, Stefanowicz. says.
Tuesday’s blood drive offered each donor a coupon for a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut, as well as a free maple creemee from the Vermont Maple Fest in St. Albans. The Red Cross will hold a blood drive at the Maple Fest later this month, Carmichael says.
“Who doesn’t love free stuff that you can eat?” Carmichael says.
Each donor also had the chance to enter a name in a drawing to win a pair of Red Sox tickets; the promotion will continue thoughout the Red Sox baseball season. The Red Cross has a professional relationship with the Red Sox that developed after Sept. 11, 2001, Carmichael says. Since 2002, they have hosted a blood drive at Fenway Park every year, usually on the 9/11 anniversary.
There are eight games that Vermont donors have a chance of winning tickets to. The New England region has access to the entire home schedule and the games are divided up among the states, so everyone has an equal chance to win, he says.
Critically acclaimed
The phrase “critical need” is commonly heard when talking about blood. When the Red Cross uses terms like "urgent need" or "crititcal need" it does so as a last resort in an effort to communicate to the public that the blood supply is in great need of support from the public, Carmichael says.
The need for blood is on-going and the Red Cross is committed to ensuring an adequate supply of blood for patients in need, he says.
“We don’t want our message to be falling on deaf ears, so we try to stay away from the ‘c’ word as much as possible,” he says.
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Sophomore Bridget Dailey waits patiently as a Red Cross representative checks to make sure everything is going smoothly. (Photo by Emily Rose) |
According to Carmichael, as of April 1, five of the eight blood types are at less than a two-day supply. If people stopped donated these types, the current supply of those five blood types would last two days. When people hear this, they tend to equate those numbers with the term “critical.”
Blood has a shelf life, however the Red Cross does not want to see someone go through the process of donating blood just to let it become outdated. For this reason the Red Cross constantly has to keep a balance between the need for blood and how they publicize the need, he says.
The Red Cross may say that it is at critical need with a given blood type when it is down to below ahalf-day supply, Carmichael says. Type O negative is currently in the so-called “red zone” at a one-day supply. They are not yet, however, saying that they are at critical need, he says.
During holidays and over the summer, the amount of blood coming in tends to drop, in part beacuse 20 to 35 percent of the donor base are high school and college-aged students, so when they leave for the summer the Red Cross loses access to most of the donors, he says.
New England: bone marrow beacon?
In January 2007 the Red Cross teamed up with Michael Guglielmo, executive consultant of DKMS Americas, the largest bone marrow registry in the world. DKMS is an acronym for the German translation of “bone marrow donor center."
Guglielmo is also the president of the Save Giovanni’s Friends Foundation, Inc. Giovanni is Guglielmo’s
20-month-old son who is battling a rare immune deficiency called NEMO, which stands for NF kappa essential modulator, Guglielmo says.
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Giovanni Guglielmo, at only 20 months, has been diagnosed with NEMO, a rare immune deficiency, and is still in need of a bone marrow transplant. (Photo courtesy of Michael Guglielmo) |
Giovanni’s cousin, Krystle Rollins, is executive assistant of the Save Giovanni’s Friends Foundation. NEMO was just discovered in 2000. There are only about 50 to 100 confirmed cases, Rollins says.
“We’ve teamed up with the Red Cross because when Giovanni was really sick he needed Red Cross blood,” Rollins says.
When Guglielmo found out about his son’s disease, he was told that because of his Italian, Irish and Greek background, Giovanni had a 1 in 20,000 chance of finding a marrow match, Guglielmo says. He decided that he was going to put 20,000 people on the registry, he says.
His new mission is to make New England those life-saving states by adding 100,000 people to the registry and saving hundreds of lives, he says.
“New England can become the beacon of bone marrow movement that can spread across the country and solve this problem of lack of people in the bone marrow registry,” Guglielmo says. “It’s Giovanni’s mission and I’m his instrument.”
Guglielmo’s drives have added nearly 13,000 people to the registry and have found nine matches for patients in need, he says. The international registry has about 11.3 million people. Every day there are 6,000 people looking for a bone marrow transplant, Guglielmo says.
“Only two out of every 10 kids find a match,” he says. “The rest die.”
The bone marrow test is a simple process. It involves rubbing a cotton swab on the inside of each cheek. The sample is then sent to the registry, where it will remain until the donor’s 61st birthday, Guglielmo says.
If people are found to be matches, they are notified by the registry, Rollins says. If they wish to continue and donate their marrow, there are two simple and relatively painless processes they can choose from. Both processes are paid for by the recipient’s insurance, she says.
Tuesday’s drive added 37 people to the bone marrow registry, Carmichael says.
“It’s just important that everybody know that if they become a member of the bone marrow registry that they could save somebody’s life,” Guglielmo says. “They could give somebody the chance to live.”