Give the gift of life, donate blood

Every year on 14 June, countries around the world celebrate World Blood Donor Day (WBDD). The event, established in 2004, serves to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products, and to thank blood donors for their voluntary, life-saving gifts of blood.

migrator|13 Jun 2016 1:26 AM IST

Chennai

Ahead of this year’s observance, here are a few interesting facts:

WBDD is one of eight official global public health campaigns marked by the World Health Organization (WHO), along with World Health Day, World Tuberculosis Day, World Immunization Week, World Malaria Day, World No Tobacco Day, World Hepatitis Day, and World AIDS Day.
WBDD celebration brings a precious opportunity to all donors for celebrating it on national and global level as well as to commemorate the birthday anniversary of the Karl Landsteiner (a scientist who won the Nobel Prize for his great discovery of the ABO blood group system).
The theme of this year’s WBDD, 14 June, 2016, is “Blood connects us all”. It focuses on thanking blood donors.
Of the 108 million blood donations collected globally every year, approximately half of these are collected in the high-income countries, home to 18% of the world’s population. This shows an increase of almost 25% from 80 million donations collected in 2004.
1% blood donation by 1% of the population can meet a nation’s most basic requirements for blood. 62 countries collect 100% of their blood supply from voluntary, unpaid blood donors.

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