World Blood Donor Day is celebrated all around the globe on the 14th of June annually. This day marks the need to thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving donations of blood. It is also observed to generate awareness among people that regular blood donations are crucial to ensure the quality, safety and availability of blood and blood products for patients in need.
Blood transfusion and blood products like plasma derivatives save lakhs of lives every year. Patients suffering from life-threatening diseases need blood continuously to live longer and with a greater quality of life. It also supports complex medical and surgical procedures and is necessary for maternal and child care.
A key component of an effective healthcare system in any country is a blood service that gives patients access to safe blood and blood products in sufficient quantity. And only voluntary, unpaid donors can ensure an adequate supply by regular donations. Several countries with inefficient healthcare systems still face the challenge of making sufficient blood available, ensuring its quality and safety simultaneously.
Every year, World Health Organization (WHO) organizes events celebrating this day. This year, in 2018, the host country for World Blood Donor Day 2018 events is Greece. The worldwide event is going to be observed in Athens on 14th June 2018. For this year’s campaign, the theme that has been selected is “Blood donation as an act of solidarity”. The slogan that has been adopted by WHO for this year is – “Be there for someone else. Give blood. Share life”.
Through this year’s campaign, WHO aims to connect with people by highlighting stories of those whose lives have been saved by blood donation, as a way of motivating regular blood donors to continue giving blood and to motivate particularly young people in good health who have never given blood to begin doing so.
So let give blood, let save life!