CSR: Encouraging Blood Donation To Save Lives
India is currently facing blood shortage. It has about 10% less blood corresponding to its requirements. This accounts to 12 lakh blood units. The eligible blood donor population is more than 512 million people in India. However, because of ignorance, lack of knowledge about the simple process, and myths associated with it, India has not really been able to cover the deficit.
India faces almost 1200 road mishaps every day. About 60 million trauma induced surgeries are conducted in the country every year. Apart from this, millions of complicated pregnancies, major operations, cancer treatments, thalassemia treatments, etc. require huge amount of blood transfusions.
Earlier, the blood donors were reimbursed for their donation. This activity has been banned by the government since 1995. This is cause further shortage in blood donors. However, this has also stopped unsafe blood donations made in the greed of money.
Several organisations are working towards sensitizing the public of the benefits of blood donations. This has increased the voluntary donations from 54.3% in 2006 to 83% in 2012. The shortage has gone down from 17% to 9%. However, people still die because of lack of blood.
On the occasion of its 124th year milestone, Punjab National Bank organised blood donation camps across 200 blood donation centres in 76 circle offices covering over 6500 branches across all states and union territories.
The camp was inaugurated at PNB Head Office in Dwarka in association with the Red Cross Society of India and AIPNBOA (All India Punjab National Bank Officers Association). The blood donation drive resulted in over 15,000 units of blood being donated. A large number of local staff members voluntarily came forward to participate in this initiative.
Blood donation is a simple and harmless process. An average body has 10 pints of blood in it. Roughly one pint is taken out during blood donation. It only takes 6 to 8 weeks for the body to replace that blood.
Also, There are four types of transfusable products that can be derived from blood: red cells, platelets, plasma and cryoprecipitate. Two or three of these are produced from a pint of donated whole blood. Thus, we can save more than one life by donating blood just once.
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