World Blood Donor Day

World Blood Donor Day

World Blood Donor Day will again be celebrated throughout the world on June 14. It was officially designated as an annual event by the World Health Assembly in 2005. Blood Donor Day provides a special opportunity to celebrate blood donors. And, to thank voluntary blood donors around the world for their gift of blood. World Blood Donor Day is a major focus for action toward achieving universal access to safe blood transfusion. Every single donation is a precious lifesaving gift. Repeat donation is the key to building a safe and sustainable blood supply. The awareness ribbon color for blood donations is red. We offer red fabric awareness ribbons in bulk, red wristbands, and red enamel awareness pins.

In many countries, blood services face the challenge of making sufficient blood available. It also ensures its quality and safety. Lack of access to safe blood and blood products, especially in low- and middle-income countries, impacts all patients. These include those requiring regular blood and blood product transfusions. One of WHO strategies is to assist low- and middle-income countries in improving the availability and quality of human plasma. This includes optimizing the utilization of the plasma recovered from whole blood donations. And also increasing patients’ access to the life-saving plasma protein therapies.

Focus of this year’s campaign

The slogan for 2023 World Blood Donor Day campaign was “Give blood, give plasma, share life, share often.”  It focuses on patients requiring life-long transfusion support. In addition, it focuses on the role every single person can play by giving the valuable gift of blood or plasma. Further, itt also highlights the importance of giving blood or plasma regularly. This creates a safe and sustainable supply of blood and blood products that can always be available, all over the world. That way, patients in need can receive timely treatment.

The objectives are to:

1. Celebrate and thank individuals who donate blood and encourage more people to become new donors.
2. Encourage people in good health to donate blood regularly, as often as is safe and possible, to transform the quality of life for transfusion dependent patients and help to build a secure blood supply in all countries in the world.
3. Highlight the critical roles of voluntary non-remunerated regular blood and plasma donations in achieving universal access to safe blood products for all populations.
4. Mobilize support at national, regional and global levels among governments and development partners to invest in, strengthen and sustain national blood programs.

Activities that help promote the slogan of 2023’s World Blood Donor Day may include donor appreciation ceremonies. Others include social networking campaigns, special media broadcasts, social media posts featuring individual blood donors with the slogan, meetings and workshops, musical and artistic events to thank blood donors, and coloring the iconic monuments red or yellow. Countries are encouraged to disseminate to various media outlets stories of people, in particular transfusion-dependent patients, whose lives have been saved through blood or plasma donation as a way of motivating blood and plasma donation.

Host country for World Blood Donor Day 2023

The host country for the global event of World Blood Donor Day 2023 is Algeria through its National Blood Transfusion Service. Rome will be the host in 2024.