World Blood Donor Day : Things to know before blood donation, myths and facts

Today on June 14, whole world is celebrating “World Blood Donor Day” to raise awareness about blood donation. The event is one of eight global public health campaigns led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and serves to “thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood.”

As we all know our body has motion because of blood, when the flow of blood stops our body stops, not only flow the quantity of blood getting lower or higher then its average it also cause lots of issue’s to our body and in such case sometimes people die. India is the second most populous country in the world and ironically, while there is a need for 4 crore units of blood annually, but unluckily only 40 lakh units are available. The need for blood arises every two seconds – it may arise due to surgery, heavy injury, or to treat a life threatening disease which requires blood components.

World Blood Donor Day started by WHO

To come out from these kind of situations WHO ( World Health Organisation ) announce June 14 as World Blood Donor Day to encourage people to donate blood and to increase the number of donors.

World Blood Donor Day also aims to raise awareness regarding 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, as an integral part of universal health coverage and a key component of effective health systems.”

Important things to know before you donate blood

• It is very much important to make sure that you match for the donation eligibility criteria, like donor must be in age group of 18-65 years and his/her weight should be minimum 45 kg.
• The haemoglobin level of the body is also an important factor and that must be more than 12.5 grams.
• It should be clear that any person can donate blood only once in 3 months.
• Person suffering HIV/AIDS, Syphilis Hepatitis B/C and diseases that are capable of being transmitted through blood transfusion cannot donate blood at any condition.
• It was strictly recommended to stay away from heavy exercise or heavy lifting for atleast 24 hours after blood donation.

World Blood Donor Day 2019 Theme

The Theme for World Blood Day 2019 “strongly encourages more people all over the world to become blood donors and donate blood regularly, actions which are key to building a strong foundation of sustainable national blood supplies that are sufficient to meeting the needs of all patients requiring transfusion.” Well we can also say that Blood Bonation is a good habbit for any person to become fit and fine and by doing this you are also saving someone’s life.