Southern Africa District 9300 is re-launching its blood donor program - Governors' Challenge Blood Drive - for the Rotary Year 2008-2009 in collaboration with the South African National Blood Service (SANBC). "We have changed our strategy as the country's hospitals require a steady supply of blood rather than an erratic one," PDG Peter Margolius, the district's blood drive organizer, explains. The Challenge has spread to the district's Interactors, and plans are to invite districts in several other countries in Southern Africa to join the blood drive challenge.
"To help out, district 9300 has two strategies: 1) to get Rotary Clubs to organize blood drives among their members, places of employment, schools, colleges, shopping malls and businesses in conjunction with SANBS. 2) to get Interact Clubs to organize high schools to challenge each other, and in fact we are busy planning a schools blood challenge for July this year."
"Basically, South African National Blood Service needs between 810,000 and 900,000 units of blood annually country-wide to meet current needs. SANBS has a donor base of 300,000 donors. Therefore, if we can get every donor to donate three units of blood annually, hospitals in South Africa will never run short of blood," says Peter Margolius. In South Africa, the average donor donating whole blood can donate every 56 days, giving six units per donor annually.
The Challenge program follows the Rotary Year, July 1 - June 30, and will be judged on the following criteria:
According to the District's newsletter, Snippets, February 2008, every club irrespective of size will have an equal opportunity to win the prize. The total number of units of blood donated will be divided by the number of club members on July 1 to give an average of the number of units donated per member of the club. i.e. Club "A" has 20 members and donates 200 units of blood for the year, the average units per member will be 10. Whereas club "B" with 45 members collects, 200 units will have average of 4.44 units per member.
Participating Rotary Clubs are urged to establish a donor base by listing individuals among: existing blood donors; Rotarians; Rotary Anns and Inner Wheel members; Rotaract Clubs; Interact Clubs; family members; friends and neighbours; businesses/companies/corporate; other clubs; church groups; shopping malls; high schools; colleges and universities.
The newsletter Snippets emphasizes that it should be 1) remembered that there is no restriction on blood donations from any race group; 2) all blood of new and existing donors is tested; 3) new donors are required to present themselves knowing beforehand that they are safe as there is still the risk of the window period.
In addition to the challenge among the Rotary Clubs, District 9300 plans "to have a massive high school blood drive" in the next few months. To start with, girls from McAuley House Interact Club have taken up the Governors' Challenge Blood Drive. Simphiwe Ngwenya, an Interactor from the Roman Catholic McAuley House Convent School, motivated the initiative.
For the purpose, a meeting of all the high schools with Interact clubs was announced - to be held May 17 - "to plan the way forward with the District 9300 blood drive," Peter Margolius told ourblooddrive.org.
"These girls are so fired up, it is amazing to see. Their school has agreed to supply the venue and they are looking for some sponsors to supply cold drinks and snacks for those who attend," PDG Peter Margolius wrote in the district newsletter.
According to the newsletter, this is an ideal opportunity for Rotary Clubs to tie up with their Interact Club as the base of their group of blood donors.
The district's blood drive coordinator has urged "all club secretaries to pass this info on to their Interact Clubs as I truly believe this could be one of the most incredible projects for the district. It may even be something that can continue and become an annual project," the district's blood drive coordinator said.
The Interact girls are advised, that "the Blood Service only needs an undercover/under-roof area as their mobile busses are no longer in operation. This area does not need to be more than about 7 meters x 7 meters."
District 9300 is expected to merge in July 2010 with District 9250. The new district will be known as District 9400. The blood challenge will be spread into District 9250, the other part of the new District 9400, as the plan develops for the merger of the two districts.
The two districts have formed a committee to plan and coordinate the process for the merger. The committee has 12 members with equal numbers from each district and is jointly chaired by the two District Governors, Kobla Quashie from D9250 and DG Shirley Downie from D9300.
"As soon as we have the blood challenge going in District 9300, we will move to the other districts in Southern Africa, District 9210, District 9270, District 9320, and District 9350, Peter Margolius tells ourblooddrive.org .
- District 9300 encompasses Johannesburg and surrounding areas. (49 Rotary Clubs with 974 members).
- District 9350 covers a large part of the Southern Africa sub-continent, the whole of Angola and Namibia, and the western part of the Republic of South Africa. (61 clubs with 1432 members).
- District 9210 encompasses Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Northern Mozambique. (49 clubs with 1165 members).
- District 9270 encompasses in the Eastern Cape: the magisterial districts of Butterworth and Mthath; in Mpumalanga the magisterial district of Piet Retief; and the province of KwaZulu-Natal. (46 clubs with 1032 members).
- District 9320 encompasses the central area of South Africa and Lesotho. (52 clubs with 1176 members). (Click here to see the Zone 10A nesletter The Membership Energiser, March 2008, including the montly membership evaluation).
The blood donor guidelines from South African National Blood Service are:
- donor minimum age - 16 years;
- donor maximum age for new donors - 65 years;
- donor's weight - minimum 50 kg and healthy;
- a person can donate whole blood every 56 days;
- a person can donate platelets every 28 days;
- the blood type "O" represents 40 per cent of donors and is used by most blood groups;
- the blood type "A" cannot be used as widely as "O" for other blood groups. It is mainly used for plasma and platelets.
The Governors' Challenge Blood Drive was introduced in 2002 to the clubs of District 9300 in a district newsletter with a reference to collaboration with District 5790, Texas USA. "We were challenged by Chuck Kurtzman, DGN 2003-04 for District 5790 to join them in getting involved in blood drives by canvassing, and recruiting new blood donors," the newsletter told the Rotarians of District 9300. The newsletter explained that the challenge would run parallel with other district competition among the clubs from July 1, 2002, to March 31, 2003.
Here is how it all began, when the Governors' Challenge Blood Drive jumped from one continent, America, to another, Africa: Chuck Kurtzman and Peter Margolius met in South Africa in 2001 in connection with a Rotary Foundation Trustees' meeting. Chuck was an invited participant, Peter served as guide for the visitors to the Johannesburg area. "Peter's deep involvement came out. Soon, we had discussed a Challenge and Peter got it into action the next year." In 2004, Peter - on his way to the International Institute for his training to become district governor - and his wife, Penny, visited Chuck and his wife, Ellen, at their home in Texas, and "we held a meeting with our friends from District 5810 and District 5790 at Carter BloodCare, the first international meeting of the Governors' Challenge Blood Drive," Chuck remembers. Chuck Kurtzman founded the Governor's Challenge Blood Drive in his home District 5790, North Texas, in 1998 and co-founded (with Haagen Cumlet) the Global Network for Blood Donation, A Rotarian Action Group in 2006-07 of which he became the first president. He served as DG in 2003-04. The Governors' Challenge Blood Drive has also spread to at least one more US Rotary district (D5810). The President of Rotary International for 2008-09, Dong Kurn Lee, has named Chuck Kurtzman as the Assistant General Coordinator 2008-2009 the Health and Hunger Resource Group for 2008-09.
South African National Blood Service is an association of voluntary, non-remunerated blood donors and is active in eight of the nine provinces, into which South Africa is divided. According to a SANBS fact sheet, 3,000 units of blood must be collected every day in this part of the country. "The mission is to provide all patients with sufficient safe, quality blood products and medical services related to blood transfusion in an equitable, cost effective manner," Dr. Loyiso Mpunthsa, Chief Executiver Officer, emphasizes at the organizations website. SANBS has a promotion whereby the National Blood Service will give every donor who donates four units of blood in a calendar year a gift.
There are two blood transfusion services in South Africa. South African National Blood Service (SANBS) and the Western Province Blood Transfusion Services (WPBTS), which is active in the province of Western Cape. The two non-remunerated blood donor organizations operate under licence from the Department of Health and are not state owned. WPBTS collects more than 130,000 units of blood a year, according to the organization's homepage.
Footnote : Go to the journal PHOTOS for pictures and maps related to this article.
Editor's note : PDG Peter Margolius, blood drive coordinator for District 9300, can be contacted at MARGOLIUS@telkomsa.net - or by tell: 011 475 8446 / cell: 082 736 7476. Peter Margolius was his district's Centennial Governor (2005-06).
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