The blood drive held on the Mississippi University for Women’s campus on Thursday, Nov. 15, gave MSMS students an opportunity to demonstrate the MSMS ideal of service.

The drive, which took place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in MUW’s Cochran Hall, involved a number of MSMS students. For many of them, including senior Samantha Anderson, this was their first time giving blood.

“I was really scared at first because I haven’t eaten breakfast today, but everything went fine,” Anderson said.

The drive provided donors with water and snacks to replenish fluids and nutrients lost while giving blood.

MUW hosts one blood drive on its campus every semester, and it typically has a high turnout.

“We usually have all of our slots [for scheduled donations] filled,” said Jazstiny Jackson, an MUW student who has been a community service intern since this past spring. “A lot of our faculty and staff here at the W get really involved with it, as well as our students, and our nursing program also offers extra credit to their students who give blood.”

Since 2015, the organization behind the MUW drive has been United Blood Service, which recently rebranded itself as Vitalant along with nine associated organizations. A representative of the organization says that Vitalant is hopeful for future drives.

“We used to have ten different organizations that were all under the same umbrella but with different names, and it made some systems a bit more difficult,” said Barley Lindsey, a “donor recruiter” for Vitalant. “Our branch is located in Tupelo, and we service hospitals local to the locations of our drives. This is something that we definitely try to do with the W, and I think this is the first year we’ve gotten to involve MSMS to the level that we’ve been able to today.”

Blood donations play an important role in replacing blood loss in trauma or surgery and in treating conditions such as anemia or cancer. Advice given to donors before and after the procedure include staying hydrated, eating iron-rich foods like spinach and avoiding heavy physical activity for the rest of the day. Donations from the drive at MUW will be distributed to hospitals in the Golden Triangle area.