Red Cross, Urban League host blood drive to encourage donations from the Black community

MADISON (WKOW) — The American Red Cross and the Urban League of Greater Madison (ULGM) hosted a blood drive Saturday with the goal of encouraging more people in the Black community to donate and raising awareness about sickle cell disease. 

Dr. Ruben Anthony, the president and CEO of ULGM, said sickle cell disease is “a crisis” for many people in the Black community. 

“A lot of times, this O+ blood that many African Americans need is not available unless we bring African Americans in to donate,” he said. “So having this initiative here gives us a chance to get blood that is a good fit for those in the community. Doing that is a service to the community.”

Bobby Moore, ULGM’s sickle cell chair, said the number of patients in the Madison area who have sickle cell disease is increasing, and that’s one of the reasons why ULGM hosts blood drives. 

“It’s a disease that, when you go online and you look at some of the videos about the people that are in pain crisis, they will actually make you cry,” he said. “It’s actually really heart wrenching when you hear the people that are in sickle cell crisis say that they go to the hospital fearing that they actually might die because there’s not enough blood or blood that they need for the sickle cell transfusion.”

The Red Cross also provided free health screenings to people who donated blood at the drive.