(Give the gift of life: donate blood!)
Introduction:
On 14 June 2012, countries worldwide will celebrate World Blood Donor Day with events to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products and to thank voluntary unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood.
The transfusion of blood and blood products helps save millions of lives every year. It can help improve life expectancy and the quality of life for patients suffering from life-threatening conditions, and supports complex medical and surgical procedures. It has also a crucial role to play in saving mothers' lives, especially in the cases of deliverance. However, in many countries, demand outstrips supply, and blood services face the challenge of making sufficient blood available, while also ensuring its quality and safety.
Sufficient blood supplies cannot be secured without regular blood donations from unpaid volunteers. The goal of the WHO is for all countries to obtain their blood supplies entirely from voluntary unpaid donors by 2020.
Today, in 62 countries, national blood supplies are based on nearly 100% voluntary unpaid blood donation. However, 40 countries still depend on family donors and even paid donors.
The host country for World Blood Donor Day 2013 is France. Through its national blood service, the Etablissement Français du Sang (EFS), France has been promoting voluntary non remunerated blood donation since the 1950s. A global event will be held in Paris on 14 June 2013.
Every blood donation is a gift of life:
The focus for this year’s campaign – the 10th anniversary of World Blood Donor Day – is blood donation as a gift that saves lives. WHO encourages all countries to highlight stories from people whose lives have been saved through blood donation, as a way of motivating regular blood donors to continue giving blood and people in good health who have never given blood, particularly young people, to begin doing so. There is a continuing need for regular blood supplies, given blood cannot be saved for long before being used. That's why an adequate number of healthy people are needed to donate blood on a regular basis, in an endeavour to secure sufficient quantities of blood to be used when need be.
Blood is the most precious gift to be presented from someone to another; it is the gift of life. And when dissolved to its components (red cells, platelets and plasma), blood can be used to save numerous lives by using each component in specific cases.
• Globally approved date: 14 June, 2013
• Locally approved date: 5 Sha'ban, 1434H
Theme of the World Blood Donor Day:
(Give the gift of life: donate blood!)
Targeted Groups:
- The youth.
- Those frequently susceptible to accidents.
- People undergoing serious surgeries.
- People suffering from Leukemia and other tumors..
- People suffering from hereditary blood diseases (anemia, sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, etc.)
- Health workers (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, health educationists, etc.)
- Education workers (teachers, social workers, etc.)
- Health decision makers.
- Health associations, societies and organizations.
Major Health Messages:
- Thanking and reinforcing the self-esteem of those who give blood so they continue to do so regularly;
- Inspiring those who do not give blood but are in good health to start donating blood;
- Prompting the behaviours that would reduce risks, in a way that enables individuals to protect their health and donate blood safely.
- Achieving the MOH's self-sufficiency of safe blood and blood products, and to moving towards 100% voluntary unpaid blood donation.
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