ROTC Blood Drive Challenge

By MIDN 2/C Omar Amakhtari

Every minute of every day, someone needs blood. That blood can only come from a volunteer donor since there is no such thing as synthetic blood. On October 22-23, 2008, and February 17 and 19, 2009, Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) unit, and other nearby ROTC units, helped donate large amounts of blood in order to help the Central Blood Bank save lives.

The Central Blood Bank, a not-for-profit organization, was established to serve the transfusion needs of Pittsburgh’s hospitals.  Seeing an opportunity to tap a resource of selfless individuals in their pursuit, the Central Blood Bank devised a friendly competition amongst the local ROTC units.  This event was facilitated by a competition agreed to by all the ROTC units, in which the winning unit would obtain valuable bragging rights and receive a small monetary donation. Of the 108 total ROTC blood donors, 82 came from our unit.  The Army and Air Force ROTC units rounded out the rest of the competition by adding 15 and 11 donors each respectively.

While these donation results were enough to claim CMU NROTC victorious, the true winners were the patients whose dire needs for blood transfusions were made possible. Over 300 local hospital patients benefitted from this event and as always, we were proud to help those who were in need of help.