St John WA “bleeds the way” in the 2021 blood challenge

St John WA is “bleeding” the way in the Australian Red Cross 2021 Emergency Services Blood Challenge,

• The 2021 Challenge encourages employees within emergency services to donate blood or plasma to help save lives of countless Australians who require emergency blood transfusions each day,
• St John WA has won the Challenge for the past three years, with 596 donations made last year alone — the equivalent of saving up to 1788 lives.

St John WA Chief Executive Michelle Fyfe has joined more than 100 members of the St John WA workforce who have rolled up their sleeves to donate blood, plasma and platelets for the 2021 Australian Red Cross Emergency Services Blood Challenge.

Ms Fyfe is a regular plasma donor and was joined in fierce competition by WA Police Commander Alan Morton and Department of Fire and Emergency Services Deputy Commissioner Craig Waters at the Red Cross donation centre in Perth this week.

Beginning in June and carrying through to 31 August 2021, the Challenge invites emergency services teams to donate blood or plasma and help save lives.

Every week, Australia needs 31,000 blood donations to help save lives and with donated blood only holding a shelf life of 42 days for use, ongoing donations are crucial to meeting demand.

Committed to saving lives in any way they can, the St John WA team have won the Australian Red Cross Emergency Services Blood Challenge every year since 2018. Last year the St John WA team made 596 donations — the equivalent of saving up to 1,788 lives.

At the end of June 2021, more than 100 members of the St John workforce had donated, topping the leaderboard in competition against police and DFES at this early stage of the race.

St John WA CEO Michelle Fyfe said the team looked forward to competing in this year’s Challenge, with the goal to beat the number of donations made last year.

“We have an incredibly passionate team here at St John WA. In line with our mission to support the wellbeing of our communities, we’re always looking at ways to be able to contribute to supporting our patients. The Australian Red Cross Emergency Services Blood Challenge provides the perfect opportunity for us to do this.”

“Since St John WA began taking part in the Emergency Services Blood Challenge, we have collectively donated enough blood to save over 4000 lives. This is an incredible accomplishment that we’re extremely proud of. This year, we look forward to continuing to grow our donations and winning the challenge for the fourth year running,” Ms Fyfe said.

Blood donated to the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood initiative is used to treat countless illnesses across Australia. Specifically, one third of blood donations help treat people with cancer.

The competition for this year’s Emergency Services Blood Challenge is set to be fierce and the winning team announced in September. For more information on the initiative, visit the Donate Blood website.