A day out at the Bloodbank@HSA for Boon Lay Secondary Biology students.

From the informative presentation on the process of donating blood to interacting with student’s all-time favourite – the Blood Buddy, our visit to the Bloodbank had definitely provided the students with a ‘cool’ way to learn outside their textbooks.

The programme began with a presentation where the students learned useful information related to blood donation such as the shelf lives of the different units of blood collected. In addition, the lively speaker from the Red Cross Blood Donation Drive also helped the students dispel many myths pertaining to blood donation and discussed several cultural and social aspects of blood donation around the world.

After the short presentation, the students were divided into two groups. They were led by the Red Cross blood donation drive ambassadors as they made their tour of the high-end facilities available and interacted with the friendly and passionate youth ambassadors from Innova Junior College. The students were particularly excited about meeting the Blood Buddy and many students were impressed with the youth ambassadors as they were passionate in educating them on the importance of blood donation, especially among the youths.

What made the trip all the more memorable was during the tour when one of the students volunteered to go for the copper sulphate screening test to ascertain her haemoglobin concentration. This test helped to determine if a person is a suitable donor.

In addition, the helpful ambassadors were always ready to answer queries from our students during the tour.

All in all, the visit to the Bloodbank@HSA not only served as a memorable learning experience to complement classroom learning, it also delivered important national education messages in a fun and effective way. We definitely learned a lot from this visit!

Written by

Stanley Yang
Boon Lay Secondary School