JCHS blood drive is big success

Joe Sasser receives encouragement from his son, JCHS senior Boyd Sasser, as he donates blood while Shepeard employee observes progress. (Photos contributed)

The senior anatomy class at Jenkins County High School sponsored their annual blood drive, Tues. Feb. 12. The goal was 150 pints of usable blood and as usual, they outdid themselves by collecting 185 pints.

The drive began that morning at 8:30 a.m. with seniors setting up for the drive and getting students to the gym for the donations. The local community started arriving about the same time and the participation continued until 6:30 p.m.The total numbers for the drive were 244 attempts, 49 deferrals, 13 unusable donations and 4 ALYX procedures. This blood drive will result in 555 transfusions for this regional area.

"We were backlogged all day and even with extra help from Shepeard we still had to turn some donors away due to the limited time frame," commented Marsha Madray, the sponsoring teacher for the drive.

"The people of Jenkins County should be so very proud of these seniors and the hard work that they put into this project," says Madray.

Former JCHS student, Coley Clifton, is shown as a Shepeard employee begins the collection process.

She continued, "To make this project successful and meaningful to not only themselves, but to families of those who have suffered from burns or been in need of blood products, we study about the cardiovascular system and blood components and apply information to real life situations. After our class studies we take a field trip to the Joseph Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital and to the Shepeard Community Blood Center in Augusta. Students tour through the critical care unit to see how burns affect all body systems and how blood components are so vital to the survival of these patients. After the tour, many hours of planning, advertising and promoting the drive has to take place. Students were responsible for designing their T- shirts, making announcements in their churches, putting up flyers, sending home announcements to parents, attending Planters prayer breakfast, announcing at Rotary Club and the local television sta- tions in Augusta, making bulletin boards and most importantly, personally asking individuals to donate. This blood drive will always hold a special place in the hearts of these seniors due to the Dixie Crystal explosion in Savannah. They felt like everything they were doing was making a tremendous difference in the lives of the burned victims and their families. The blood collected was sent to a lab in Florida to be tested for HIV, syphilis and hepatitis; which takes 2-3 days. After testing results were in Shepeard used all of the blood collected at the burn center within two days for the 15 victims of the refinery explosion. Some of the victims will need blood components for the next six months or longer, and we plan to continue to encourage others to donate when they can. The drive may be over but our compassion for the families and our prayers to the 'Great Physician' continue."

Brandon Wade is shown on the ALYX machine, which collects two units of red blood cells from one donor.

Linda Walker, the coordinator from Shepeard, explained to the students that currently 34 schools participate in blood drives and are placed into divisions based on student enrollment. Jenkins County ranks first in their division (185 pints) with Lincoln County coming in second (69 pints). Out of the 34 schools, Jenkins ranks second with Evans High School being first (215 pints). Evans High School also has an enrollment of 1500+ students so the parents and the community should be extremely proud of the 31 seniors and the job they did hosting this blood drive.

Many JCHS students and former students, the administration and community members participated in the blood drive. The turnout was tremendous. This was a required school project but the community should get the praise for supporting such a worthy cause in this time of crisis in our area.

"If we try to thank individuals for their support, we are sure we will unintentionally omit someone, and we do not want to do that. So from the first donor to the last, from the mayor to the principal, all community members and students we the senior anatomy class of 2008 say a big 'thank you' for helping us to leave a legacy of good deeds for our school and our community," Madray said.