When the Gloucester Citizen needed a human interest angle for its campaign to sign up more blood donors – there was one right in the newsroom.

The paper’s Time for a Pint campaign aims to secure some 500 extra pints of blood for those in desperate need over the next three months.

Citizen reporter Annelisa Macaulay-Lowe knows more than most how vital donating blood can be.

Her mother needed blood transfusions when Annelisa, her eldest of five children, was born in 1975, and again when her youngest daughter Ione was born in 1986.

On the first occasion mum Jennie needed four pints of blood – but the real drama came after Ione’s birth when a massive haemorrhage meant she needed up to eight pints to save her life.

Jennie told the Citizen: “I feel tremendous relief now because I was there to look after Annelisa and after having Ione I was there to look after the five of them.

“I’m eternally grateful to those people who donated the blood in the first place.”

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