WERI foundation- GIVE BLOOD, The Gift OF Life
World Blood Donor Day is celebrated every year on 14th June
Incentives
The World Health Organization recognizes World Blood Donor Day on 14th June each year to promote blood donation. This is the birthday of Karl Landsteiner, the scientist who discovered the ABO blood group system.As of 2008, the WHO estimated that more than 81 million units of blood were being collected annually.
Benefits
The World Health Organization set a goal in 1997 for all blood donations to come from unpaid volunteer donors, but as of 2006, only 49 of 124 countries surveyed had established this as a standard. Plasmapheresis donors in the United States are still paid for donations. A few countries rely on paid donors to maintain an adequate supply. Some countries, such as Tanzania, have made great strides in moving towards this standard, with 20 percent of donors in 2005 being unpaid volunteers and 80 percent in 2007, but 68 of 124 countries surveyed by WHO had made little or no progress. In some countries, for example Brazil,it is against the law to receive any compensation, monetary or otherwise, for the donation of blood or other human tissues.
In patients prone to iron overload, blood donation prevents the accumulation of toxic quantities.Blood banks in the United States must label the blood if it is from a therapeutic donor, so most do not accept donations from donors with any blood disease.
Others, such as the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, accept blood from donors with hemochromatosis. It is a genetic disorder that does not affect the safety of the blood.Donating blood may reduce the risk of heart disease for men, but the link has not been firmly established. Also, donating one pint of blood causes the donor to burn approximately 650 calories.
In Italy, blood donors receive the donation day as a paid holiday from work.Other incentives are sometimes added by employers, usually time off for the purposes of donating.Blood centers will also sometimes add incentives such as assurances that donors would have priority during shortages, free tshirts or other small trinkets (e.g., first aid kits, windshield scrapers, pens, etc.), or other programs such as prize drawings for donors and rewards for organizers of successful drives. Most allogeneic blood donors donate as an act of charity and do not expect to receive any direct benefit from the donation.
- Blood Diseases affects refugees and victims of war
A blood donation occurs when a healthy person voluntarily has blood drawn. The blood is used for transfusions or made into medications by a process called fractionation.
In the developed world, most blood donors are unpaid volunteers who give blood for a community supply. In poorer countries, established supplies are limited and donors usually give blood when family or friends need a transfusion. Many donors donate as an act of charity, but some are paid and in some cases there are incentives other than money such as paid time off from work. A donor can also have blood drawn for their own future use. Donating is relatively safe, but some donors have bruising where the needle is inserted or may feel faint.
Potential donors are evaluated for anything that might make their blood unsafe to use. The screening includes testing for diseases that can be transmitted by a blood transfusion, including HIV and viral hepatitis. The donor is also asked about medical history and given a short physical examination to make sure that the donation is not hazardous to his or her health. How often a donor can give varies from days to months based on what he or she donates and the laws of the country where the donation takes place. For example, in the United States, donors must wait 8 weeks (56 days) between whole blood donations but only 3 days if only donating platelets, between apheresis donations.
The amount of blood drawn and the methods vary, but a typical donation is 500 milliliters (or approximately one US pint) of whole blood. The collection can be done manually or with automated equipment that only takes specific portions of the blood. Most of the components of blood used for transfusions have a short shelf life, and maintaining a constant supply is a persistent problem.
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Blood donations are divided into groups based on who will receive the collected blood.An allogeneic (also called homologous) donation is when a donor gives blood for storage at a blood bank for transfusion to an unknown recipient. A directed donation is when a person, often a family member, donates blood for transfusion to a specific individual.Directed donations are relatively rare. A replacement donor donation is a hybrid of the two and is common in developing countries such as Ghana. In this case, a friend or family member of the recipient donates blood to replace the stored blood used in a transfusion, ensuring a consistent supply. When a person has blood stored that will be transfused back to the donor at a later date, usually after surgery, that is called an autologous donation. Blood that is used to make medications can be made from allogeneic donations or from donations exclusively used for manufacturing.
The actual process varies according to the laws of the country, and recommendations to donors vary according to the collecting organization. The World Health Organization gives recommendations for blood donation policies, but in developing countries many of these are not followed. For example, the recommended testing requires laboratory facilities, trained staff, and specialized reagents, all of which may not be available or too expensive in developing countries.
An event where donors come to give allogeneic blood is sometimes called a blood drive or a blood donor session. These can occur at a blood bank but they are often set up at a location in the community such as a shopping center, workplace, school, or house of worship.
Blood Donation: The Need Blood Transfusion are a critical part of everyday medicine. It is estimated that 9 out of 10 persons will need blood sometime in their life. The importance of life saving properties of transfused blood became clear from Second World War and thereafter blood transfusion became a routine hospital function. The blood required is collected by voluntary donations.
Give Blood Give Life
UK Blood Association’s adverts.
GIVE BLOOD – The Gift OF Life
We all expect blood to be there for us, but barely a fraction of those who can give do. Yet sooner or later, virtually all of us will face a time of great vulnerability in which we will need blood. And that time is all too often unexpected.
From its beginning, the American Red Cross has formed a community of service, of generous, strong and decent people bound by beliefs beyond themselves. The honor, spirit and resources of the American people comes forth with neighbors helping neighbors in need — during earthquakes, floods, fires, storms — and also for the deeply personal and often quiet disasters that require a gift of blood.
To find out where you can donate, visit www.givelife.org or call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE (1-800-448-3543).
To help you remember to schedule your blood donations and other regular screening tests, the College of American Pathologists encourages you to sign up for an e-mail reminder today at
http://MyHealthTestReminder.com.
CONSEQUENCES OF WAR – Urgent Needs of Blood
Depicting the horrors of war through the ages and it’s evolution from tribal jingoism, through ruthless destruction to the consequential heartbreaking devastation.
On The Path to Universal Blood – The universally-accepted type “O”.
It used to be the case that in the event of needing a blood transfusion you could only get specific types of blood. For certain people that could be a worse thing than others, but it could all be a thing of the past thanks to scientists at the University of Copenhagen led by Henrik Clausen.
The Danish team have developed a way to scrub the antigens (sugars that give blood its “type”) from blood cells, effectively transforming it into the universally-accepted type “O”. The process uses two enzymes, one of which is found in the human gut and the other commonly causes opportunistic infection.
Blood testing The donor’s blood type must be determined if the blood will be used for transfusions. The collecting agency usually identifies whether the blood is type A, B, AB, or O and the donor’s Rh (D) type and will screen for antibodies to less common antigens. More testing, including a crossmatch, is usually done before a transfusion. Group O is often cited as the “universal donor” but this only refers to red cell transfusions. For plasma transfusions the system is reversed and AB is the universal donor type.
Most blood is tested for diseases, including some STDs. The tests used are high-sensitivity screening tests and no actual diagnosis is made. Some of the test results are later found to be false positives using more specific testing. False negatives are rare, but donors are discouraged from using blood donation for the purpose of anonymous STD screening because a false negative could mean a contaminated unit. The blood is usually discarded if these tests are positive, but there are some exceptions, such as autologous donations. The donor is generally notified of the test result.
Donated blood is tested by many methods, but the core tests recommended by the World Health Organization are these four:
- Hepatitis B Surface Antigen
- Antibody to Hepatitis C
- Antibody to HIV, usually subtypes 1 and 2
- Serologic test for Syphilis
The WHO reported in 2006 that 56 out of 124 countries surveyed did not use these basic tests on all blood donations.
A variety of other tests for transfusion transmitted infections are often used based on local requirements. Additional testing is expensive, and in some cases the tests are not implemented because of the cost.
These additional tests include other infectious diseases such as West Nile Virus. Sometimes multiple tests are used for a single disease to cover the limitations of each test. For example, the HIV antibody test will not detect a recently infected donor, so some blood banks use a p24 antigen or HIV nucleic acid test in addition to the basic antibody test to detect infected donors during that period. Cytomegalovirus is a special case in donor testing in that many donors will test positive for it.The virus is not a hazard to a healthy recipient, but it can harm infants and other recipients with weak immune systems.
The A and B antigens, which give blood groups their name, are sugars carried on the surface of red blood cells. Human red blood cells can carry one of these antigens, both, or neither; giving four blood groups: A, B, AB and O, respectively.
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Find organ and tissue donation resources.
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EMERGENCY SANITATION FOR REFUGEES
We need yours, because every three seconds someone needs blood.
About the Storage, supply and demand ;There are no storage solutions to keep platelets for extended periods of time, though some are being studied as of 2008,and the longest shelf life used is seven days.Red blood cells, the most frequently used component, have a shelf life of 35–42 days at refrigerated temperatures.This can be extended by freezing the blood with a mixture of glycerol but this process is expensive, rarely done, and requires an extremely cold freezer for storage. Plasma can be stored frozen for an extended period of time and is typically given an expiration date of one year and maintaining a supply is less of a problem.
The limited storage time means that it is difficult to have a stockpile of blood to prepare for a disaster. The subject was discussed at length after the September 11th attacks in the United States, and the consensus was that collecting during a disaster was impractical and that efforts should be focused on maintaining an adequate supply at all times.Blood centers in the U.S. often have difficulty maintaining even a three day supply for routine transfusion demands.