Giving blood, when people hear this some tremble at just the thought of it. Giving blood has been going on since 1818 when a British obstetrician named James Blundell realized that he could provide female patients with blood from their husbands by a syringe. He had performed 10 of these transfers in his life in which 5 of those had been successful. For it being the year 1818 those odds were life changing since 50/50 odds had been better than the alternative odds. This had slowly evolved into a more efficient procedure with time and the rise of modern medical technology.
Every year Hughson High School partners up with the Red Cross Administration to host our annual Blood Drive. Students ages 16 and up are encouraged to give blood in order to help sick patients in the local hospitals. Human beings can safely donate 1 pint of blood and depending on the person’s red blood cell count it could be slightly more. Giving blood helps in many ways, it can help with different kinds of sicknesses as well as be used in different cures. The possibilities are endless if you have the building block of an organism and in this case it is the blood of us humans.
Worldwide there have been around 16 million people who have donated their blood in the year 2023. This number may be even more this year in 2024. The cool thing about giving blood is that your body can naturally give you more. For the ill people in the world they have a different story. Some children and even adults in the world do not have healthy enough bodies for their heart to be able to pump more blood through their bodies. Not only can blood be used in a long term treatment, it can also be used for emergency situations, such as transfusions or if someone happens to be bleeding out. Blood is useful for so many uses and there are times where hospitals do not have enough of it which can be fatal for some patients who reside in those hospitals. Giving blood is a very generous thing to do and fortunately, many still do it to this day and will hopefully continue to as well.
Aiden Standen is a sophomore at Hughson High school, he had chosen to give blood because of his want to do something good for the community and also the free shirts. Aiden Standen said “Bring back the Snoopy shirts, the Oreos were great”.
Blaine Fusi, a senior at HHS, said that his experience giving blood was slightly painful but was an overall good experience. He said that his reasoning for giving blood was because he was a great guy.
These are two of the 35 people who had given blood at Hughson High’s Annual Blood Drive. They both saw this opportunity as being something to help people.
