Greek blood, marrow drive a success

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Jason Canniff

An American Red Cross volunteer extracts blood from a donor while two more in the foreground raise their arms to recirculate blood at Wells Commons on Tuesday. According to Claire McDonough, a Red Cross employee who coordinated the efforts, the event wa

Jason Canniff

Travis Jailbert, left center lays parallel with Emily Brown while donating blood at Wells Commons Tuesday afternoon. Waiting for an available nurse are Shauna Perry, left and Don Fuller, right.

Jason Canniff

Mark Eldridge, an employee of American Red Cross, runs a tube of blood through a machine which crimps it into usable segments. Eldridge used to drive a taxi in Bangor until about 10 months ago when he ´´saw an ad in the paper and just decided

The Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Council held their annual Red Cross blood drive Tuesday, April 17, in Wells Commons. This year’s event also featured a bone marrow donor screening, the first ever held at the University of Maine.

Students, local residents and more than 30 Red Cross employees struck at the heart of a 10 month old state-wide blood shortage by collecting more than 300 pints yesterday. In addition, money from the tobacco settlement helped the Red Cross fund the costly bone marrow screenings.

Blood drives canceled by this winter’s foul weather and new medical procedures requiring larger blood donations are keeping blood supplies low.

“Organ transplants, on the rise in recent years, require a lot of blood,” Angela Bilodeaux, a Red Cross official, said. “Cancer treatments are another major beneficiary of our blood supply. Forty percent of Eastern Maine Medical Center’s blood budget benefits cancer patients.”

The IFC and Pan Hellenic Council increases Greek participation in the drive and spices up their annual community service production by creating competition among Greek chapters. The organization supplying the most blood donors earns points toward the Greek Week competition, according to Jon LaBonte, IFC President.

At UMaine’s first bone marrow screening, potential donors will have their marrow type recorded, but will not donate to a storage bank, Pi Kappa Alpha brother Matt Allen said.

“Marrow and peripheral blood stem cells are not collected prior to determining a match between the potential donor and recipient,” he said.

Allen also said the risks associated with undergoing the donation process are exceedingly low but it is better to avoid medical procedures of any kind unless absolutely necessary.

The National Marrow Donor Program has more than four million potential donors in its registry and facilitates about 130 transplants each month.

“Given that ratio of actual transplants to that of potential donors, it is not practical to consider storing marrow or blood stem cells,” Allen said.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2001, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.