World Blood Donor Day 14th June 2023

On 14 June 2023, World Blood Donor Day will again be celebrated throughout the world. Officially designated as an annual event by the World Health Assembly in 2005, the Day provides a special opportunity to celebrate and thank voluntary blood donors around the world for their gift of blood and has become a major focus for action towards achieving universal access to safe blood transfusion.

Every single donation is a precious lifesaving gift and repeat donation is the key to building a safe and sustainable blood supply.

In many countries, blood services face the challenge of making sufficient blood available, while also ensuring its quality and safety. Lack access to safe blood and blood products – especially in low- and middle-income countries, impacts on all patients, including those requiring regular transfusion. One of WHO strategies is to assist low- and middle-income countries in improving the availability and quality of human plasma, including optimising the utilisation of the plasma recovered from whole blood donations, and increasing patients’ access to the life-saving plasma protein therapies.

Focus of this year’s campaign

The slogan for 2023 World Blood Donor Day campaign is “Give blood, give plasma, share life, share often.” It focuses on patients requiring life-long transfusion support and underlines the role every single person can play, by giving the valuable gift of blood or plasma. It also highlights the importance of giving blood or plasma regularly to create a safe and sustainable supply of blood and blood products that can be always available, all over the world, so that all patients in need can receive timely treatment.

The aim this year is to

celebrate and thank individuals who donate blood and encourage more people to become new donors; encourage people in good health to donate blood regularly, as often as is safe and possible, to transform the quality of life for transfusion dependent patients and help to build a secure blood supply in all countries in the world. Also to

highlight the critical roles of voluntary non-remunerated regular blood

and plasma donations in achieving universal access to safe blood products for all populations and

mobilize support at national, regional and global levels among governments and development partners to invest in, strengthen and sustain national blood programmes.

Countries are encouraged to disseminate to various media outlets stories of people, in particular transfusion-dependent patients, whose lives have been

saved through blood or plasma donation as a way of motivating

blood and plasma donation.

The host country for the global event of World Blood Donor Day 2023 is Algeria through its National Blood Transfusion Service.

Most of the people still don't know how many lives can be saved by donating blood. In India even today people are afraid to donate blood. They think that this will make the body weak. While this is not the case at all. Blood donation keeps the body healthy.

Benefits of blood donation - Make the heart healthy - The biggest advantage of blood donation is that it keeps the heart healthy. Those who keep donating blood, they have less risk of heart diseases and stroke. If there is more iron in the blood, it affects the heart. When donating blood, the amount of iron remains balanced. People who donate blood, their body tired to fulfill the deficiency of blood. Due to which the red blood cells production in the body increase which is good for health. Those who donate regularly, their health is better than others. It also helps to control the pressure.

Before blood test you go through a free physical examination, your blood pressure, hemoglobin, pulse are checked. Also the donor blood is screened for Hepatitis B Hepatitis C Syphilis Malaria and HIV. So if any of these is

detected

people become aware and get treatment started early for any such diseases.

A healthy person should donate blood every 3 months. The reason behind this is that in 90 to 120 days the body gets rid of its own red blood cells and new red blood cells are produced. This is the reason why doctors advise to donate blood every 3 months.

Therefore, it is necessary to donate blood and make other people also motivated and aware.

Blog by Dr. Aditi Kumar