More blood, more life
World Blood Donor Day encouraged more people to become regular voluntary blood donors
Treating the patient with blood and thus saving valuable lives when all other means of treatment becomes standstill is a miraculous achievement in the history of medicine. This art of treatment gives a sense of doing something for humanity. Millions of people owe their lives to people whom they never met — the heroes who donated blood voluntarily and without any reward. The spirit of World Blood Donor Day is to praise those heroes, show the honour and respect for saving millions of lives which could not have been saved otherwise. The day was observed on June 14. The objective of the day is to create awareness among new blood donors about the importance of voluntary blood donation and encourage more people to become regular donors. There is inadequate supply to replace blood lost during childbirth (a major cause of maternal deaths) and to treat anaemia that threatens the lives of mother and children. Blood and blood products are needed everywhere for routine and emergency surgery including life-saving treatment of growing numbers of people injured in road traffic accidents and for treating congenital haemolytic anaemias like Thalassaemia. Voluntary non-remunerated blood donors are the foundation of safe blood supply, because they are associated with significantly lower levels of infections that can be transmitted by transfusion, including HIV and hepatitis viruses. Screening for transfusion-transmissible infections is essential, but safer donations come from the safer donor. Reference laboratory in Dhaka Medical College Hospital under Safe Blood Transfusion Programme reveals that the country requires roughly 6 lac units of blood yearly and currently only around 31 percent of total collection comes from voluntary blood donor and rest from family or replacement blood donors. The current blood collection system of our country is based on relatively risky platform in terms of availably, accessibly of blood. Hospital based blood centres with exception of very few drives for blood collection from voluntary blood donors through mobile blood camp. On the other hand, there are various organisations working on blood collection through voluntary blood donation fails to meet requirement of the country. A fresh look into the situation needs to be given before it gets worse. We need to identify the gaps, laps and mystifying factors that are most vital to know why the country yet to reach voluntary blood donation by 100 percent. As per World Health Organisation (WHO) global blood safety initiative — it is the state's responsibility to ensure safe blood in adequate for the citizen of the country. There is strong need to have situation analysis to identify factors why people are not attracted or motivated to donate blood only under altruistic attitude rather directed, the potential and professional organisation which can support in motivation m recruitment of voluntary blood donor and ways for resource allocation to do these. Special focus should to be given for development of vertical programmes. Generally 1 percent of total population is necessary to meet a nation's basic requirements for blood. There is hope that a new generation of blood donors will come forward, provide the safest possible blood for use wherever and whenever it is needed to save lives.
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