Last Thursday, a very enthusiastic group of people representing the town of Lakewood, MMCSC, and the community as a whole, came to the Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus to save lives by donating blood.
“It was an outstanding effort with unprecedented results that got people to roll up their sleeves and donate,” explains Frank J. Vozos, M.D., FACS, CEO, Monmouth Medical Center, Southern Campus and executive Vice President of RWJ Barnabas Health.
The drive had 150 donors, and 110 units of blood were collected. More than 185 lives will be saved throughout the RWJBarnabas Health System!
“These blood donors recognized that the need was real and carried that message to their families friends co-workers and colleagues to produce outstanding results,” said Sally Wells, RWJUH Blood Services Business Development Liaison.
Wells added, “Every three minutes a patient requires a blood transfusion to sustain or save their life. We rarely collect 100 units of blood in a day.
This drive brought in more than that! These numbers alone show how truly amazing this effort was. This drive has helped to stabilize the local blood supply at this very critical time of year, where maintaining our normal blood supply can be very challenging.”
In 2017, the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospitals Blood Services partnered with all 11 RWJ Barnabas Health Acute Care facilities to run blood drives.
“One of our goals was to reach out into the communities we serve and give residents an opportunity to be involved in the health care of their families friends and neighbors,” said Wells. “Every drive has had a very positive impact, but none to date has seen the outward support and turnout that we saw last Thursday. I am both personally and professionally proud of the employees of MMCSC, the Township of Lakewood and the community at large. Patients from our community are dependent on the Barnabas Health Hospitals throughout the area and having a safe and reliable blood supply is part of our readiness strategy. Thank you for helping us and thank you for being a blood donor.”
“I would also like to thank Bikur Cholim of Lakewood who willingly works hand-in-hand with RWJBarnabas throughout these blood drives to obtain community support. Their involvement was certainly a great part of the success.
“I would also like to extend a thank you to our promoting sponsor of the event, The Lakewood Scoop. They graciously promote these events each time using multiple forums to inform the community of the upcoming drives. There is no doubt that without their assistance the results would not have been as strong,” says Wells.
“We looked forward to continuing more blood drives in the future with the Lakewood community, and offering extended hours as well as we were able to do this time.”
(Pictured: Rabbi Yehuda Kaszirer, Administrative Director Bikur Cholim of Lakewood and Dr. Seth Cohen, Regional Director for RWJBH Hematology and Oncology.)