Persuasive Speech: Everyone Should Donate Blood

Specific Purpose Statement: To persuade my audience to donate blood

Introduction:

I. Imagine your father has just suffered a heart attack and must undergo open-heart surgery in order to repair the damage.

II. Imagine your little nephew or niece baby was born with a heart defect and required daily transfusions of blood in order to have a chance at survival.

III. Imagine your best friend has just been diagnosed with leukemia, a disease requiring regular transfusions of platelets.

IV. Not very nice images are they, but these things happen and unfortunately some of you may even have experienced them already.

A. Naturally you'd hope and expect the hospital to have enough resources to facilitate the return to health, or to prolong their lives,

B. And naturally you'd want to do everything in your power to help.

V. There is one way you can help, that is by donating blood

A. Transfusions of red blood cells, platelets, and plasma are critical to a patient's return to good health,

B. And vital in helping to save someone's life in an emergency situation.

VI. Some individuals requiring blood are surgical patients; burn victims; accident victims; anemics'; hemophiliacs; seriously ill babies; and persons suffering from leukemia, cancer, kidney disease and liver disease.

Body:

I. It is estimated that in the United States, every three seconds a patient needs blood

II. That's a lot of blood

A. Sometimes the blood can be pre-donated by the patients themselves

B. However, most of the blood, needs to come from healthy volunteer donors

III. Yet only 5% of the eligible US population donates blood in any given year.

A. Healthy donors are the only source of blood.

B. As Blood can't be made or harvested, there is no substitute.

IV. The blood supply in the US is consistently low

A. And the demand for blood increases each year

B. Much faster than the rate at which people are donating blood

C. As a result the supply of red blood cells (the most used blood component) barely serves the growing demand.

V. To put this need into context, currently more than 4,000 gallons of red blood cells are used in

the US every day

A. And that amount is increasing.

VI. It is estimated that 85% of us will need a transfusion at some point in our life.

A. By donating blood to insure there is enough in supply, the life we save may be our own.

B. Just one blood donation could save up to three lives

(Transition: I'm hoping most of you by now are considering giving blood, and I'm sure most of you are wandering what it entails)