South Carolina megachurch turns campuses into blood donation centres
NewSpring Church, a megachurch in South Carolina, is hosting blood drives at its campuses across the state through a partnership with a local nonprofit that has issued an urgent call for blood donations amid the coronavirus outbreak. The church is now in partnership with 'The Blood Connection' to convert its campuses into temporary donation centres that will allow donors to maintain a safe distance from other donors during the blood donation process.
In a Facebook post published on Wednesday, NewSpring told its congregants that donating blood is “one way to help hospitals and serve those in need.”
“Blood donations provide hospital patients with essential treatments and transfusions,” the church’s post explains. “Your donation could be life-saving for many patients during this pandemic. So starting this week, NewSpring will host blood drives at campuses across the state.”
The Blood Connection, a South Carolina-based nonprofit, is an independent community blood centre that provides blood products to more than 70 hospitals serving hundreds of thousands of patients across Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
NewSpring was founded by Perry Noble, its former pastor, over 20 years ago, and now consists of 14 campuses managed by a team of lead pastors.
The partnership between the church and nonprofit comes as U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams issued an urgent call last month for Americans to donate blood. Due to stay-at-home orders nationwide, thousands of blood drives across the U.S. have been canceled in recent weeks.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, respiratory viruses like COVID-19 are not known to be transmitted through blood transfusion and there have been no reported cases of transfusion-transmitted coronavirus.
Source and image: christianpost.com
