GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – The American Red Cross and the Green Bay Packers joining forces Tuesday to reach a target 5,000 pints of blood by the end of the day.
The “Drive for Five” community blood drive is taking place at Lambeau Field until 7 p.m.
Red Cross Regional CEO Patty Flowers says you never know when you’ll need lifesaving blood.
“For every pint of blood there’s a possibility that it could save 3 lives because there are 3 components in a pint of blood that we can use. So really 15,000 people could have a lifesaving procedure and it could be because of your pint of blood.”
Flowers says they have to continually replenish their blood supply because it has a shelf life. According to www.americanredcross.org, red cells have a shelf life of 42 days and stored at a temperature of 6 degrees Celsius.
“A bad car accident or something like that, you can have someone that needs over 100 pints of blood. That’s a lot of blood that’s needed at that time. We want to make sure that it’s there for that person,” says Flowers.
At the beginning of the day they only had 300 pints to go before reaching the target.
Packers CEO Mark Murphy attended the event.
The Packers have been hosting staff blood drives since 2003 and community blood drives since 2009, welcoming more than 2,000 different donors over the last 14 years.
