Bacardi and its staff gave the gift of life in honour of the fourth annual corporate blood drive competition. The company was awarded the revolving trophy and a certificate when their victory was announced yesterday at Bacardi Headquarters on World Blood Donor Day.

Much of their success was due to Ms Lisa Frias, manager — Global Finance, who led the Bacardi effort. She has been donating blood for 15 years, having grown up watching her parents donate.

Ms Frias rallied the employees together, overseeing six blood drives during the year-long competition and giving out incentive prizes to those who were able to donate. “One of Bacardi’s values is caring,” she said. “We care for the community and are an active part of it.”

Through their hard work, the company collected 79 donations of blood, which contributed “18.7 per cent of all the blood donations that came in as part of the competition,” according to a press release from the Bermuda Hospitals Board.

Bacardi’s staff were able to see just how much their efforts impacted the community when Bacardi employee Matt Bishop and his wife were expecting their first child.

The pregnancy had been hard and Bishop’s wife required blood transfusions as she lost a lot of blood.

Ms Jeanne Atherden, Minister of Health and Seniors, offered her congratulations to Bacardi on a “well-earned win” and the other 18 companies who participated.

Dr Clyde Wilson, BHB Chief of Pathology, said: “The competition this year has been terrific. The 195 new blood donors helped bolster numbers and total donors went up from 968 to 1,095.”

The corporate blood drive competition began in February 2012, when the list of donors was becoming low.

According to Dr Eyitayo Fakunle, consultant haematologist, targeting Bermuda’s workforce was the best way to increase the donor pool.

Ms Anna Nowak, vice-president — Public Relations of Bermuda Hospitals Board, said this year featured “the highest number of participating companies”. In total, there were 423 blood donations — 384 whole blood donations and 39 apheresis (blood plasma) donations.

However, Dr Fakunle said: “Even with the new donors this year, we are keen to encourage more people to donate. The hospital has been working at capacity for much of this year and this resulted in the number of transfusions rising by 300 between 2015-16, when there were 1,711 transfusions, and 2016-17 when there were 2,006 transfusions. The need for blood transfusions goes up as people age, and our community is getting older.”

The Bermuda Hospitals Board hopes their pool of donors will increase even more during the 2017-18 competition. If you would like to sign up, e-mail the Blood Donor Centre at blood.donor@bhb.bm or call 236-5067 and the form will be sent to you.