World Blood Donor Day is being celebrated all around the world and the unique life-saving role of blood donors is being elaborated before others.
The focus for this year’s campaign is “Safe blood for saving mothers”. The campaign will increase awareness about why timely access to safe blood and blood products is essential for all countries as part of a comprehensive approach to prevent maternal deaths.
Today, 62 countries, including the United States, collect 100 percent of their blood products from voluntary, unpaid donors. The World Health Organization hopes that all countries will achieve this goal by 2020.
Blood donations benefit all types of patients from cancer patients or surgical patients, to those with battlefield injuries.
Each unit is critical and no donation is too small. Consider that:
Forty or more units of blood may be needed for a single trauma victim.
Eight units of platelets may be required daily by leukemia patients undergoing treatment.
A single pint of blood can sustain a premature infant’s life for two weeks.
In Pakistan, different NGOs have been spreading awareness amongst the masses regarding blood donation, for quite some time and emphasizing urgent need for more people all over the world to become life-savers by volunteering to donate blood regularly.
Pakistani civil society, students, philanthropists and other social workers have played a great role in educating the people about the significance of donating blood for saving someone’s life.
Numerous activities, seminars and sessions are organized countrywide for this purpose, throughout the year.
Moreover, dissemination of relevant stories through media outlets is also conducted, in order to educate more and more people about this.
