Celebrate Madiba, donate blood

THE Durban North Blood Bank at Kensington Square will be celebrating Mandela Day with a blood drive. Also attending the drive will be the North Durban Donor Centre and The Sunflower Fund.

The staff have urged residents to spend their 67 minutes donating blood and registering as a bone marrow donor and/or an organ donor on Saturday, 18 July from 8am to 6pm.

Last year 200 people attended the Mandela Day Drive and this year the team hopes to see more people take part.

According to Joy Pires, the clinic supervisor, the blood stocks are always running low, but stocks are particularly low during June and July. “It is flu season, and people who suffer from flu are not able to donate and those who have beaten the winter virus have to wait seven days after recovery to donate,” she said.

Additionally the school holidays have also caused a dip in the current stocks.

Nondumiso Ndlovu, a Durban North resident, is one of the few individuals who have stepped forward to donate the life saving fluids.

The second year nursing student made her very first donation last week. The 19-year-old said her studies have made her aware of the importance of blood in saving people’s lives, and this motivated her to brave the needle and donate. “It is a small sacrifice to help people and to save a life,” she said.