Importance of Voluntary Blood Donation
'National Voluntary Blood Donation Day, 1 Oct, 2010'

By Dr L Tomcha Khuman *

Blood is vital to human life. It carries essential nourishment to all the tissues and organs of the body. Timely access to safe blood transfusion is a life-saving measure in many clinical conditions and can also prevent serious illness in patients suffering from violence and injury, road traffic accidents, child birth related complications and other conditions. Hence, blood transfusion services occupy a vital space in any National Health Service delivery system (2).

Safe blood saves lives - but, for too many patients around the world whose survival depends on blood transfusion, blood transfusion is either not available or not safe. Every second of every day, people around the world - of all ages and from all walks of life - need blood transfusions to survive. Safe blood is blood that does not contain any viruses, parasites, drugs, alcohol, chemical substances, or other extraneous factors that might cause harm, danger or disease to the recipient.

It is mandatory to test all the donated blood units for the presence of any of the TTIs. If a blood unit is found positive for any of the TTIs then the blood is considered unsafe for transfusion and discarded. In Voluntary Blood Donation the donors donate their blood voluntarily and for altruistic reasons and never know who the recipients are.

Voluntary Blood Donors are considered as the safest source of blood as they have low prevalence of TTIs (Transfusion Transmissible Infections) like HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Malaria and Syphilis while the family/replacement donors carry higher prevalence of TTIs (3).

The world over 88 million units of blood from all sources are collected annually. The quantity is sufficient to fill 32 modern Olympic Swimming Pools but not enough for the 6,910 million world population which requires 150 million units annually. Everything is increasing and the need for safe blood is also increasing. 57 of the 193 WHO member states are able to meet their annual requirement of blood from voluntary blood donors' source including Zimbabwe.

Some countries having high levels of voluntary blood donors per 1,000 population figures are Switzerland -113/1,000, Japan -70/1,000 while for India it is 4/1,000. It is generally recommended that the equivalent of 1-3% of a country's population should donate blood to meet a country's blood needs.

Against an annual requirement of 8 million units of blood, India is able to collect only 5.6 million units of which 3 million units (56%) are from voluntary blood donors while the remaining 2.6 million units (44%) from family/replacement donors. Manipur is still lagging behind in regard to Voluntary Blood Donation.

The national level of voluntary blood donation is 56% with States like Tripura, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra having more than 85% of voluntary blood donation. It has been estimated that of all the blood units collected in the State only 10% is from voluntary blood donors. Rest all comes from family/replacement blood donations.

Tripura, a small North Eastern State has the highest level of voluntary blood donation in the country with 93% while our State of Manipur with just 10% voluntary blood donation is the lowest in the country. In other words people of Manipur have the highest level of risk of contracting TTIs while Tripura has the lowest level of risk.

Probably we still lack well trained good motivators. Unawareness/ignorance of the general public about voluntary blood donation and to some extent their fear and misconceptions regarding blood donation are other contributory factors. Again the Blood Transfusion Services in the State are mainly hospital based and are at different levels of management system.

To add to this, not many voluntary organizations devote their precious time and resources for motivating people for voluntary blood donation and hosting blood drives. HIV-endemic, conflict situation, resource-poor setting of the few Donor Organizations also present numerous challenges, especially in the recruitment of non-remunerated voluntary blood donors.

Association of Voluntary Blood Donors, Manipur (AVBD-Manipur)born out of a desire to promote voluntary blood donation and positive lifestyle behavior as part of an integrated HIV/AIDS prevention and control strategy in Manipur has been organizing Youth Donor Recruitment Program.

The main components of the Donor Recruitment Program are (i) to create awareness among students/youths regarding blood donation, (ii) to sensitize principals and teachers of colleges/educational institutes/local clubs/NGOs regarding voluntary blood donation, (iii) to motivate the students/youths for blood donation, (iv) to form a network of peer motivators from various colleges/educational institutes/local clubs/NGOs, (v) to try and evaluate the effectiveness of various strategies for donor motivation.

The main focus areas of AVBD, Manipur's Blood Program are:
- Healthy individuals to become regular voluntary blood donors
- Existing voluntary blood donors to continue to donate regularly
- Converting family replacement donors to voluntary blood donors by strengthening the blood donor education, recruitment and retention programs

In spite of the rapid and remarkable advancements in medical science today, no factory can manufacture blood. It is only in human beings that human blood is made and circulated. Hence, donation - rather voluntary donation is the only way of accumulating blood at safe storage to meet emergency requirements for saving lives.

This is the greatest gift one can do for the mankind. Voluntary Blood Donors are saviors of mankind. If someone really loves oneself and other fellow beings, the only way to express it is to donate blood voluntarily. Donating blood means giving life to someone and it is believed that voluntary blood donors command the highest respect for their sacrifice.

Today is October 1 and National Voluntary Blood Donation Day which is celebrated all over the country to create awareness on safe blood, which is possible only by regular voluntary blood donation. The significance of observance of a day like the National Voluntary Blood Donation day has become more important in a place our State which is ravaged by HIV/AIDS epidemic.

By motivating the young people and other potential donors to donate blood voluntarily on regular basis we will be achieving
(i) a safe and sustainable supply of blood and blood products,
(ii) HIV & other TTI free young population This message has to be conveyed to a large number of people so that voluntary blood donation could become a mass movement. People must understand the importance of voluntary blood donation and come forward voluntarily to donate blood.

Towards this end, AVBD-Manipur is organizing a Voluntary Blood Donation Camp at D.M.College of Arts, Imphal from 10.00 a.m. (on Oct 1 2010) onwards to which all are invited to join.

Donate Blood regularly & Stay away from HIV & other TTIs.