Blood Donation: The Gift of Life
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.
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