MUNISING — Residents of the Munising area will get a chance to do their part to save lives during a community blood drive at Munising Memorial Hospital Monday.

Walk-ins are welcome at the blood drive which goes from 1 to 5:30 p.m. Monday. The event will be put on by the Upper Peninsula Regional Blood Center, which supplies blood to 13 U.P. hospitals.

The drive comes at a time when the U.P. has an urgent need for blood of all types.

“Being that we are the primary provider for 13 hospitals, we have big shoes to fill,” said Rachel Washburn, blood collections coordinator for the U.P. Regional Blood Center. “Anytime an accident or a surgery happens in the U.P., they are getting the blood from us. We have to increase our blood supply to make sure that we can supply all of these hospitals.”

Washburn points out that giving blood is a very easy, fast process which plays a massive role in caring for the community.

“Giving blood doesn’t take long at all. It only takes 30-45 minutes from the time you walk in until the time you walk out,” Washburn said. “Afterwards, you can go about your day knowing you did something good to help out the community. Plus you get juice and cookies.”

In fact, the actual donation part of the process only takes 5-10 minutes. The U.P. Regional Blood Center estimates that each full blood donation can be responsible for saving two or three lives. While 38% of people are eligible to donate blood, on average, less than 10% do.

“There are a lot of people that don’t think they can donate blood,” Washburn said. “If you are healthy and feeling good, and haven’t donated in the past eight weeks, you can definitely donate. Blood drives are actually a lot of fun, people catch up with neighbors and old friends they haven’t seen in a while. It’s a break from the normal things we do.”

For more information about this and future blood drives, visit https://www.mgh.org/our-services/regional-blood-donation or call 906-449-1450.

Randy Crouch can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 242. His email address is rcrouch@miningjournal.net.