Medical students from The Australian National University (ANU) have won the annual Vampire Cup for donating the most blood per capita in one of the nation’s largest blood-donation drives.
Organised by the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) and the Red Cross Blood Service, the eight-week drive is a competition between universities to boost blood stocks, which typically dwindle heading into the winter months.
President of the ANU Medical Student Society, Dane Lyons said medical students made 2,739 blood donations and, as each donation could save up to three lives, this equates to more than 8,200 possible lives saved.
He said James Cook University gathered the greatest raw number of donations (391); however, the ANU scored the prize for the most donations per capita, as two-thirds of the entire University cohort made a donation.
Mr Lyons said ANU was one of the country’s smaller medical schools, but it always punched well above its weight in the annual blood drives.
“In the past three years, ANU has consistently placed first out of 21 participating universities for the percentage of the cohort donating blood,” Mr Lyons said.
“I am very proud of ANU students who’ve rolled up their sleeves to save lives.”
He said this event shows young future doctors are happy to lead in encouraging the public to donate blood regularly.
President of the AMSA, Alex Farrell said Australia needs more than 25,000 blood donations each week.
