How You Can Help Make the One Percent

In general, one percent doesn’t seem like a lot.

After all, what’s one dollar out of a hundred? When you’re talking about lives, however, one percent becomes a huge number.

Every year, over 4.5 million people will need blood transfusions, and that’s just in the United States. When you consider that of the 38% of our population who is eligible to donate blood only about 10% actually do, you begin to realize just how hard our blood centers and hospitals have to work to prevent blood shortages, especially in the summer and winter months.

What if there was a way to prevent blood shortages?

It’s easier than you might think!

If just one more percent of Americans donated blood, we’d be able to prevent blood shortages altogether. I know, one percent sounds like a laughably small number, but considering that out of our total population (about 307,006,550 people), one percent accounts for about 3 million units of blood reaching our hospitals that wouldn’t have otherwise. Combine those 3 million units with the blood that’s already being donated, and you can see how easy it would be to stop blood shortages in their tracks.

Donating blood is easier than you think. It only takes about an hour’s time and has the potential to save up to three lives. So what’s stopping you from donating? Let’s get that extra one percent, and help save lives in our community!