As per the 14 June 23 LiveMint article, India requires 14.6 Mn blood units every year and we consistently face a shortfall of 1 Mn units.

The shelf-life of collected blood is 35-42 days and hence regular year-round donation is needed for safe and resilient transfusion services (World Health Organization report).

When a healthy person can donate every 3 months, don’t you think, for a country of our size (LARGEST population), this deficit should not exist at all? No?!

For that, I believe we need to work on “awareness and distribution”.

My last blood donation was as unplanned as it can get. I was in Surat, my hometown. After having Panipuri, was on my way to have the Vadapav. And this blood bank is on that main road. So I decided to stop by for a voluntary donation. That’s it.

And this has been a pattern for many years now. While going for my usual junk food treat while visiting Surat, I wouldn’t have even planned it and I will end up visiting this blood bank just because it’s on my way.

Given our obsession with social media, if we can organise many more blood donation camps in colleges, share those photos online as they do it in pubs, and showcase the number of lives impacted while making it look really cool thing to do, we would have created a positive chain reaction of many more volunteer-led donations at a later stage of their lives as well.

The eligible hospitals or blood banks just need larger signboards as a reminder for people passing by. Old habits die hard, they say. :)

I have seen serial entrepreneurs mentioning 2x, 3x exits in their LinkedIn bio so taking inspiration from them, thought of editing my headline as well.
Not with my ventures but with a number of donations with the hope that someone reading my post or comment will remind them to donate as well.

And maybe, maybe, a life would have been saved by a kind human who decided to donate the blood voluntarily and the hospital and family did not have to look for it frantically when a life was at a risk. :)