Medical students roll up their sleeves in the Vampire Cup

No, it’s not a Twilight reference. Held by the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) in conjunction with the Australian Red Cross, the Vampire Cup is an annual nationwide blood drive, where medical students across Australia compete to make the most blood donations over a two-month period. The university with the most donations per capita is awarded the Cup.

Melbourne medical student Benjamin Sutu, a regular blood donor, says that the donation of blood is critical for modern medicine.

Blood transfusions are used to save the lives of cancer patients, unborn babies, mothers giving birth, road trauma victims, burns victims, people undergoing surgery and people needing kidney dialysis.

“The statistics are astounding. Australians require 27,000 blood donations every week. One blood donation can save three lives. And what’s really important to note is that one in three of us will need a blood transfusion at some point in our lives, so this is an issue that is everyone’s responsibility,” says Mr Sutu. 

“What we’re seeing at the moment in the community is that fewer and fewer people are donating blood, and the demand for blood is increasing.” 

This year, Australia’s medical students have donated in record levels. This is due in part to AMSA extending the competition deadline after the Australian Red Cross activated its Blood Signal – a digital ‘bat signal’ appealing to donors – in late August, for the first time in two years. This followed a sudden spike in demand for blood as the Blood Service battled a debilitating winter flu season. 

“Nationally, the Blood Service was running low across all major blood groups, but had less than three days’ supply of O Positive and Negative blood types. O Positive is the most common blood type in the country, and O Negative can be given to anyone in an emergency,” explains Mr Sutu. “With many people cancelling their appointments due to cold and flu symptoms, blood stores were very low.

“This gave us all the final push we needed to make that big collective effort at the end. To get the word out, we utilised the channels of communication that our generation likes to use, like social media and online video.”

While Deakin University won this year’s competition with 38 per cent of the student cohort donating, Mr Sutu says that the University of Melbourne Medical Students’ Society (UMMSS) recorded an all-time high in donations this year, coming in at third place with 16.5% of the cohort donating.

“We’ve had a record number of students donate and we’ve had really positive conversations about it, so I hope that now it’s something that is at the forefront of people’s minds.”

Mr Sutu says as well as being regular donors themselves, medical professionals have a big responsibility to act as champions for blood donation in the community. 

“What we want to do is ensure that future healthcare professionals understand the need to donate and also recognise that they have a role to play to advocate for blood donation and encourage those in the community to take part.

“Even though the competition has finished, the message we’re trying to send is that blood donation shouldn’t be something you participate in just because there’s a competition happening: for people who are able to donate, it should be a regular habit,” says Mr Sutu.

“It should be something that’s at the forefront of our minds. Especially for us as medical students and future doctors – we need to be proactive about promoting activities that are good for the health and wellbeing of society.”

www.mdhs.unimelb.edu.au