By Gabrielle Terrett

The Vicksburg Post

Merit Health River Region hosted a blood drive Thursday in alliance with the American Red Cross.

The American Red Cross recently became Merit Health’s new blood provider, and brought the tradition of having a blood drive at the hospital to increase the necessary blood supply.

The drive targeted the entire community and was open to employees, clients and anyone willing to donate.

“Anybody from the community is welcome to come out and donate blood,” Zack Brantley, senior account manager for the American Red Cross, said.

“It’s for the hospital employees, their family and friends and other members of the community as well and it’s just important to know that since we are the provider of blood for this hospital that people’s donations are making an impact right in their own community.”

Organizers said that they were expecting at least 50 donors; however, the outcome exceeded their expectations with an hour remaining before the blood drive ended.

“The goal was to have at least 50 successful donors and we’ve had 57 people show up,” Brantley said. “We should be set up to achieve our goal.”

The American Red Cross goes to a number of different hospitals and conducts blood drives in an effort to show how important they are. Brantley said the ARC plans to make the blood drive a regular event at River Region.

“We’re looking forward to having many more blood drives here,” Brantley said. “This is our first blood drive here, but we plan on making it a quarterly event.”