VOA常速英语:志愿献血

I saw on the news and social media that that there was a blood shortage everywhere.And I've been a donor in the past and know that my blood is particularly valuable, I have O negative blood.And so, I've really felt this was a time for me to come out.We have quite a dedicated mobile donor base.However, we have had to decrease on that.So, high school and college students are, you know, they make up a large portion of our donors in this country.We actually had to cancel every single one of those when the coronavirus outbreak really became a huge problem in this country.So, we've not had many mobile drives.We've only maybe, had maybe, one every other day since then.For the cancellation of school, it completely canceled the blood drive in total.I do know there's a lot of community outreach recently about trying to get people to donate blood or if they're stuck at home without anything to do,they have the opportunity to come out to a clean environment and do something good for the community.You know, the students who typically donate with us, they know that their drives have been canceled. So, they're coming to the centers with their parents.Our parents are like, Okay, you signed up. So, why don't you come with me and we can donate together?

My mom is a doctor in the INOVA system and she said that they're having trouble getting more donors now because of, you know, coronavirus.I really think this is one of the things that we're learning here, is how much of a responsibility we have to each other,and so, that makes it all the more important that people who can give blood do.I'm really not concerned for myself.I'm far more worried about the people who need blood. All of our employees, all of our staff that are in clinical areas, will be wearing masks.We also wipe down all of our clipboards. Again, we use disposable pens.We're going through gloves and, you know, disinfectants.We're going through all that, all those supplies, making sure that everything is clean and safe for the donors.And right now, we're taking only appointments to be able to one, provide the social distancing practices that we have in place, make everyone comfortable and safe.I think what happens that in a crisis like this, people want to help and this is a feel-good way of helping.You're giving a blood product that's going to save someones life and donating blood is one of those things that's kind of like a civil service, kind of thing that people do to, they want to help.I do have a good friend who typically signs me up.We call her vampire Karen because she's the blood donor guru of our group. So, it's just, we're not on the same schedule right now. So, I did this on my own based upon the perceived need.We've adjusted our schedules.We've extended our blood drives. So, typically we would do a drive like this in four hours.Now, we're doing them in six hours,so that we can spread out our donors.We still want to see the same amount of donors.So, we're trying to accommodate everyone by having longer drives.We'll probably leave here with about, probably about 40, 45 units, depending on how many got through the process for various reasons.