WORLD BLOOD DONOR DAY

WORLD BLOOD DONOR DAY   JUNE 14

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.

The theme of this year’s campaign is "Thank you for saving my life".

It focuses on thanking blood donors who save lives every day through their blood donations and strongly encourages more people all over the world to donate blood voluntarily and regularly with the slogan “Give freely, give often. Blood donation matters.”

The campaign aims to highlight stories from people whose lives have been saved through blood donation, as a way of motivating regular blood donors to continue giving blood and people in good health who have never given blood, particularly young people, to begin doing so. 

Activities may include commemorative events, meetings, publication / dissemination of relevant stories on media outlets, scientific conferences, publication of articles on national, regional and international scientific journals, and other activities that would help in promoting the theme of this year’s World Blood Donor Day (WBDD).

The objectives of this year’s campaign are to:

• thank blood donors for their life-saving donations;
• promote regular voluntary unpaid blood donation;
• create wider public awareness of the need for regular donation because of the short shelf-life of blood components and to encourage existing and potential donors to donate blood at regular intervals
• focus attention on donor health and the quality of donor care as critical factors in building donor commitment and a willingness to donate regularly; and
• persuade ministries of health to show their appreciation of regular voluntary unpaid donors and provide adequate resources to provide quality donor care.