Scotland's first pop up blood donor unit has attracted more than 1,200 donors in just two weeks - a quarter of whom had never donated blood before.
St. Enoch Centre in Glasgow hosted the unit, which was the first of its kind, while essential refurbishment work was undertaken at the existing blood donor centre elsewhere in the city centre.
As summer is a key period for blood stocks, with donations traditionally dropping by 20per cent, closing the main centre without a replacement could have posed a significant risk.
It was also hoped that the temporary unit would encourage new donors to come forward and increase the number of young donors.
Over the course of the two weeks, 1,250 donors attended the pop-up unit, exceeding by a quarter targets set by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service. On some days of the unit, there were over 150per cent attendees.
The total number of donors also includes 297 people who had never given blood before.
Lynne Wildigg, Head of Donor Services for the West of Scotland, said: "We're extremely grateful to St. Enoch Centre for supporting blood donation by hosting the unit and encouraging its shoppers to give blood.
"When we established the pop-up unit one of our greatest hopes was that we would find new donors. We're thrilled to confirm that almost a quarter of the 1,250 who kindly visited our unit at St. Enoch Centre had never before given blood - that's almost 300 new people on our books helping to save Scottish lives.
"We also attracted 25per cent more donors than we had anticipated, which will significantly boost blood stocks especially as we normally experience a 20per cent drop in donations over the summer period."
Anne Ledgerwood, General Manager of St. Enoch Centre, said: "We are very proud of our staff and shoppers for the way they have rallied round to support the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service with blood donations."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article