Sheldon, Iowa — If it seems like there have been more blood drives in Sheldon lately, you’re not wrong. And there’s one coming up this Wednesday, November 4th at Sanford Sheldon.
Community Blood Bank Executive Director Ken Ver Steeg tells us about it.
(as said:) “We’re going to be over at Sanford Sheldon Medical Center coming up this week on Wednesday, November 4th. And this blood drive normally is just a half-a-day blood drive event, but we’re going to be doing an all-day event due to situations related to COVID. We need to extend this blood drive out. So we’re going to be going from 8 to 11 and 12:30 to 3:30 taking blood donations. Now as other blood drives we’ve done in the past because of COVID you do need to have a scheduled donation appointment for this blood drive event and which case you can log onto our website at cbblifeblood.org and just click on November 4th on our calendar and you’ll be able to schedule your own donation time there.”
That address again is cbblifeblood.org. Or you can call the hospital at 712-324-6360.
He says one of the reasons that they’re making it an all-day event instead of a half-day one is because they need more donations. He says donations are down 40 percent.
(as said:) “Because of being down so far on blood donations and the limitations that we have on the amount of people that we can process at a time where we’re really practicing very safe social distancing. All of our staff members wear masks and shields at all times. We also ask that donors wear masks and we do have masks to offer for people that come out and donate on the Bloodmobile. We sanitize in between each donation and each donor and this takes a little bit of time. So we were able to only process seven donors an hour where we used to be able to process 10 to 12 donors per hour.”
Ver Steeg reminds people — since the bloodmobile has been in Sheldon more recently — that they have to wait at least 56 days between blood donations. He says they keep records and their system won’t let you schedule an appointment if it hasn’t been at least that long since you last gave with the Community Blood Bank. He says they also encourage people that haven’t donated in the past to come out and give it a try because the need is great.
