World Blood Donor Day: Safe blood saves lives! Give blood and make the world a healthier place
World Blood Donor Day is an annual event celebrated on 14th June. The first World Blood Donor Day was celebrated in 2004. World Blood Donor Day serves to thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood and also to raise awareness of the need for regular blood donations to ensure that all individuals and communities have access to affordable and timely supplies of safe and quality-assured blood and blood products.
World Blood Donor Day 2020
The campaign theme for World Blood Donor Day 2020 is “Safe blood saves lives” with the slogan “Give blood and make the world a healthier place”. The idea is to focus on the contribution an individual giver can make to improve health for others in the community. Blood donations are needed all over the world to ensure individuals and communities have access to safe and quality-assured blood and blood products in both normal and emergency situations. Through the campaign, we call on more people all over the world to become life-savers by volunteering to donate blood regularly.
The objectives campaign
- to celebrate and thank individuals who donate blood and to encourage those who have not yet donated blood to start donating;
- to highlight the need for committed, year-round blood donation, to maintain adequate supplies and achieve universal and timely access to safe blood transfusion;
- to focus attention on the contribution donors make to the entire community as a critical factor in improving health;
- to demonstrate the need for universal access to safe blood transfusion and provide advocacy on its role in the provision of effective health care and in achieving the goal of universal health coverage;
- to mobilize support at national, regional and global levels among governments and development partners to invest in, strengthen and sustain national blood programmes.
What you can do
Everyone
- Become a blood donor today and help make the world a healthier place.
- Commit to being a regular donor and give blood throughout the year.
- Encourage your friends and family to become regular blood donors.
- Volunteer with the blood service to reach out to members of your community, provide care to donors, and help manage blood donation sessions/drives.
- Find out your blood type and register as a blood donor.
- Participate in World Blood Donor Day with your social networks.
- Organize and participate in virtual activities to celebrate World Blood Donor Day, promoting voluntary unpaid blood donation to the public, across government and to other sectors.
- Acknowledge the important role of blood donors in achieving the goal of “safe blood saves lives”.
- Provide resources and infrastructure to facilitate voluntary blood donation.
- Support the development of nationally coordinated blood transfusion services that provide equitable access to safe and quality assured blood transfusions for the whole population.
- Put quality assurance systems in place for blood and blood products.
- Download and distribute WHO’s World Blood Donor Day materials to health centres.
- Speak to media about the importance of blood donation and the successes and challenges of your country in meeting national needs for blood.
National blood transfusion services
- Disseminate information about the importance of giving blood.
- Distribute campaign materials that you can download from the World Blood Donor Day campaign website.
- Organize a virtual World Blood Donor Day celebration. This could include:
- Inviting prominent politicians, celebrities and sporting heroes to make videos or communicate on the importance of giving blood;
- Producing and disseminating promotional materials through your web site and social channels;
- setting up virtual visits of blood centres and inviting the public to learn about blood donation and transfusion; and
- promoting blood donation success stories and heroic blood donors to your media.
- Improve the infrastructure for blood donation and blood donor care.
- Focus attention on donor health and care and provide quality service to blood donors.
Key messages
- The world needs enough safe blood for everyone in need.
- Every few seconds, someone, somewhere, needs blood.
- Transfusions of blood and blood products save millions of lives every year.
- Health is a human right; everyone in the world should have access to safe blood transfusions, when and where they need them.
- Regular blood donations are needed all over the world to ensure individuals and communities have access to safe and quality-assured blood and blood products.
- Everyone who can donate blood should consider making regular voluntary, unpaid donations, so that all countries have adequate blood supplies.
- Ensuring the safety and well-being of blood donors is critical; it helps build commitment to regular donations.
- Access to safe blood and blood product is essential for universal health coverage and a key component of effective health systems.
- Blood and blood products are essential to care for:
- women with pregnancy and childbirth associated bleeding;
- children with severe anaemia due to malaria and malnutrition;
- patients with blood and bone marrow disorders, inherited disorders of haemoglobin and immune deficiency conditions;
- people with traumatic injuries in emergencies, disasters and accidents; and
- patients undergoing advanced medical and surgical procedures.
- The need for blood and blood products is universal, but access to safe blood and blood products varies greatly across and within countries.
- In many countries, it is challenging for blood services to make sufficient blood and blood products available, while also ensuring its quality and safety.
- Governments, national health authorities and national blood services must work together to:
- ensure systems and infrastructure are in place to increase collection of blood from voluntary, regular unpaid donors;
- establish and strengthen quality assurance systems for blood and blood products to ensure safe blood and blood products;
- provide quality donor care;
- promote and implement appropriate clinical use of blood; and
- oversee the whole chain of blood transfusion.
Source of info: WHO
World Blood Donor Day 2019: Safe Blood for all!
Blood Connects us All – World Blood Donor Day
What can you do? Give blood. Give now. Give often – World Blood Donor Day, 14 June 2017
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