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MADISON, Ala.- LifeSouth has been holding blood donation events to not only get more blood donations but also rewarded those who do.

The Good Friday event went from 10 am to 6 pm and donors were entered into a raffle for a basket filled with goodies.

Kami May with LifeSouth said, “If you want to do a good deed, donate blood on Good Friday.”

May says the company saw a great need for a pop-up blood donation center in the West Madison, Limestone County area, “Right here in the South our foot print in North Alabama, we service 17 hospitals. We try to give them the safest, the most potent blood that we can,” May told News 19, “We’re all about saving local lives.”

Events like the Good Friday one are so important, “Blood can’t be made in a lab, you need it straight from a donor,” May says LifeSouth is always working and there are no days off.

“When you’re sitting around the table with your family on Easter Sunday we’re out there still trying to be sure that we can meet that local blood supply need.”

In a week LifeSouth typically likes to have anywhere from 180-200 donors to make sure they are well equipped. The winter storms did put a damper on blood donations and they were only able to meet 60% of their goal.

“Normally we hover around the 97, 98, 99 percent range. So having with that winter storm and natural disasters that come in the area, that really does decrease the number of percentage in blood donation. So it’s really again, really important that we have events like this to kind of keep the blood numbers up.” May said.

As more pop up locations open, May said the company is still in an emergency appeal.

“We have less than a two-day blood supply on our shelf. So it’s really important that we get out of our emergency appeal, the hospitals like to keep a 3-5 day blood supply. We’re hoping that different events just like this one on Good Friday can help us pull that out.”

LifeSouth was testing for COVID-19 antibodies but will be stopping on April 18th. May says there has been a significant decrease in hospitals requesting convalescent plasma but they encourage you to make other donations.

“Since they are not requesting that convalescent plasma, we aren’t seeing the need of testing those antibodies so that people will want to give that convalescent plasma. We’re wanting to defer those people to talk them into doing platelets or even a double red cell donation.”

The pop-up location is located at 12060 County Line Road, Madison Al, 35756. The location is temporarily there for a year and operates Monday thru Friday from 10 am-6 pm.