Armed Services Blood Program Blood Drive held at Fort Riley

The Fort Riley community was able to donate life-saving blood during an Armed Services Blood Program Blood Drive at Long Fitness Center Aug. 29 to 31. Approximately 25 personnel from Fort Leonard Wood’s Armed Services Blood Donor Center and the Fort Bliss Blood Donor Center joined representatives from the 1st Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Irwin Army Community Hospital, Fort Riley Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation, and the Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security at Fort Riley for the three-day blood drive.

For more than 70 years, the ASBP has collected blood donations and supplied blood products to the Armed Services as the official blood collection agency for the Department of Defense. Fort Leonard Wood is one of seven Army donor centers that support 100 percent of the U.S. Central Command’s blood requirements and one of 10 Army donor centers tasked with producing 50% of the Armed Services Blood Program’s total collections each year.

The ASBP is the official blood program of the U.S. military and is not affiliated with other civilian collection agencies.

“We’re a little bit different from Red Cross,” said Capt. Marianne Rose, chief of the Blood Donor Center at Fort Leonard Wood. “We guarantee our blood goes to the Soldiers downrange and our families and Soldiers here stateside at our military treatment facilities.”

Blood donations at Fort Riley from more than 300 eligible donors will help service members who are injured or become ill in deployed locations around the world and will also help service members and their families who are treated in military healthcare facilities across the Department of Defense. The Military Healthcare System requires hundreds of units of blood each day to meet routine requirements, all of which come from donor volunteers.

Donors come in for many reasons. Some, like Spec. Jerome Zimmerman, 101st Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, donate because it may save a life. “I’m here donating in case anyone ever needs a blood transfusion,” Zimmerman said.

While getting prepped by the phlebotomist, Spec. Haydee Ramirez, 541st Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 1st Infantry Division Sustainment Brigade, 1st Infantry Division said, “It is my first time and I wanted to try it.” After she finished her donation, she said she would “definitely do it again.”

And there are repeat donors.

“This is just something I’ve done all the time,” said Spec. Shakir Claxton, 82nd Brigade Engineer Battalion, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division. “I’ve donated before with ASBP, and I’ve done it when I was a civilian as well.”

In addition to collecting blood, the drive provided a hands-on environment for service members trained as laboratory technicians. Spec. Alianie Delgado, 101st Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division is a medical laboratory specialist who volunteered to assist with the drive by “helping get the units prepared to get filtered and reduce leukocytes and also package the blood units.”

The ASBP was implemented in 1952 by President Harry S. Truman and has been an operational blood program since 1962. As a joint service organization, the ASBP supports every branch of military service by collecting, processing and transporting lifesaving blood products for the entire military community.

For more information on ASBP visit militaryblood.dod.mil and militarydonor.com to find a blood drive near you. To learn more about being a medical laboratory specialist in the Army visit https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/career-match/science-medicine/research/68k-medical-laboratory-specialist.html.