Friday marked the official return of the National Blood Service blood van to campus. As some of you know, we ran a campaign to encourage the giving of blood in place of a gay/bisexual man, while campaigning for a more sensible policy.

The Blood Van Visit

The blood van was in the Guild car park almost all day collecting blood based on prebooked appointments. See Fabian’s interview with Nick Petrie for his perspective on the actual visit and the donation process.

Our Campaign, and it’s purpose

Rob and I (pictured above) ran the “Give Blood Because We Can’t” in the form of a stall across from the van between 12PM and 3PM. The purpose of this was to:

  1. Encourage all people who were able to give blood.
    Obviously this was impossible with the blood van being fully booked, but we handed out contact cards for them to arrange an appointment at their nearest donation centre.
  2. Raise awareness about the lifetime ban on gay/bisexual men giving blood, current NBS policy and the unbiased facts in support of the NUS campaign.
  3. Collect signatures on an petition to have the policy changed to assess viability based on individual behaviour, not that of a group.
  4. Ensure that the Guild was well-represented with the blood van. If the Guild and LGBTQ show that they can be professional, supportive and friendly in the face of such a policy, it may sollicit support from within the NBS and create a precedent for change.

We also gave copies of the sticky posters and petition sheets to our fellow committee members at the societies fair, who distributed them to helpful and supportive people. I’d particularly like to thank RockSoc, MetalSoc, the Christian Society, the Chaplaincy for their help with this.

We were also visited by Nick and two of his lovely editors from Redbrick, who have compiled an article on the visit and our campaign.

Overall…

The campaign was a huge success. We had in excess of 270 signatures, encouraged people to give blood if and when possible, and the NHS staff at the blood van were very appreciative. Particular credit has to go to Rob Unwin for the amount of work he put into this campaign, but I’d also like to thank Kai Weston and Johnny Davis for helping make this possible.