Air Vice-Marshal
(retd) Aftab Hussain
The entire world is celebrating ‘World Blood Donation Day’ on 14 June, 2020. The campaign theme for this year’s World Blood Donor Day is “Safe blood Saves Lives” with the slogan “Give blood and make the world a healthier place”. The idea is to focus on such individuals who can help in improving the health of others in the community.
The event serves to thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gift of blood and also to raise awareness of the need for regular blood donations. In Pakistan as compared to other world community, unfortunately blood donation is not very healthy. Only few donors donate their blood voluntarily otherwise in most of the cases, the needy remain at the mercy of professional donors.
The blood collected in Pakistan merely fulfills about 33% of the total the requirement. A major portion of the collected blood is consumed by thalassaemia patients for their survivability and improved quality of life. In general, Pakistan tremendously lacks affordable and timely availability of safe and quality-assured blood and blood products. There are very few public and private organizations that ensure safety of blood from all ‘Transfusion Transmitted Infections’. These broadly include Sundas Foundation along with some other which provides hundreds of blood bags and their products free-of-cost to thalassaemic, hemophilia and cancer patients.
Through this article I would like to encourage younger people to feel encouraged to start donating the blood. During corona virus, the blood donations are highly needed to keep stocks and quality of blood donations high. Remember that the Blood donation is an act of solidarity that, in addition to not being harmful to your health, can contribute to improving or saving someone else life or even yours.
Men can give blood every 3 months and women every 4 months. Other situations that do not allow blood donation are assessed as appropriate. Taking into account the protection of the donor and the recipient/patient, the donor must answer truthfully, consciously and responsibly all the questions put to him. These are evaluated by a qualified health professional who determines your eligibility for blood donation, through a clinical evaluation and physical examination (measurement of blood pressure and determination of the hemoglobin value).
After blood donation, increase the consumption of liquids in the next 4 hours, avoid prolonged sun exposure, eat only light meals, and do not smoke for the next 30 minutes, maintain a high fluid intake in the following 3 days for the complete normalization of blood volume.
At present, the hospitals are struggling with a lack of blood, which can make it difficult to provide health care to patients who need it. Hospitals and their patients are totally dependent on donor availability and solidarity. Please come forward and donate your blood to save multiple lives.
