Blood Donation: The Gift of Life

By in Cancer

Jun 14, 2018

14th June is being celebrated as World Blood Donor Day across the globe. This year Greece will be the local host for the event and theme for the day will be “Blood Connects Us All.”  The day gives us an opportunity to thank volunteers, unpaid blood donors for their life saving gift of blood along with raising awareness about the need for regular blood donation to secure the quality, safety and availability of blood and blood product for the people who are in need. The day also motivates new donors to donate the blood especially by illustrating how blood donations have saved and changed millions of life.

The day also aims to encourage the young generation who are bit nervous and are uncertain of giving blood, to feel motivated to sign up and start donating blood so that the population of donors stay strong. This year the day has a specific slogan ‘Share life, Give Blood’, referring to the caring and cohesion which involves the donation of blood and care for others.

World Blood Donors Day is celebrated as the birthday of an Austrian Physician, Karl Landsteiner who discovered the first three human blood groups in the year 1901.

Importance of Blood Donation:

Every year millions of lives are being saved because of donation of blood and blood products. Blood donation has helped various patients who were suffering from life threatening conditions to live longer with higher quality of life. Blood donation supports various complex medical and surgical procedures as it also plays an essential life saving role in child and maternal care and especially during the time of natural disaster and man-made emergencies.

Every day there are more than 1200 road crashes occurs in the country with 60 million trauma induced procedures happens every year. On an average, there are about 230 million major operations, 331 million cancers related procedures such as chemotherapy and about 10 million pregnancy complications cases all these need transfusion of blood. Apart from this, patients who are being treated for sickle cell anemia, thalassemia and hemophilia requires a huge quantity of blood every day.

There are certain blood types which are rare in nature, therefore encouraging the need for the donation of rare types is an important part for this day.

Facts about the requirement of blood: 

• On an average our country requires 5 crore units of blood every year, out of which only a meager of 2.5 Crore unit of blood is available.
• Blood donation is considered as the gift of life as there is no substitute present for human blood.
• At every 2 second someone somewhere needs the blood
• Every day more than 38,000 blood donations are needed
• Each year a total of 30 million blood components are transfused
• Type O is the most common requested blood type by the hospitals
• Majority of sickle cell patients requires frequent blood transfusions throughout their lives

Facts about blood and its components:

• Our blood is responsible for 7% of our body’s weight
• Red cells, platelets, plasma and cryoprecipitate are the four types of transferable products which are derived from the blood.
• Every pint of blood donated can save up to three lives
• Donors have the option to either donate complete blood or certain specific components of blood only. The process of donating certain specific blood components – red cells, plasma or platelets – is called apheresis.
• The donated platelets need to be used within five days of the collections.

Some misconceptions about Blood Donation:

• The most common misconception everyone has is that they will faint or feel uncomfortable after donating the blood. Nothing as such happens after donating the blood.
• The donor will not experience any kind of pain while donating the blood
• There will be no scarcity of blood in the body after donating the blood as even after the donation the body will have surplus quantity of blood.
• You will be immediately able to resume your everyday activities after donating the blood, though the doctor will advise to refrain from exercise or heavy weight lifting for 12 hours after the donation.
• You will not get infected with AIDS if you donate the blood. All safety protocols are being followed in blood donation.

Metro Group of Hospitals encourages everyone for blood donations and educate masses with the advantages and importance of blood donations. Donate blood, save a life.