ரத்தத்தின் ரத்தமே........

                                                          Drops of LIFE

Little drops of blood save life-it is from this line- I start this blog. This is primarily intended to instill people to donate blood and salute those who are currently doing so. So what’s so bloody about it?

Blood donation in world:

There are 92 million blood donations worldwide and 45% of donations are collected in middle and low income countries.People need to wait for 56days before they give blood again and 3 days if they had given only platelets.Safety procedures have increased manifold and now we only have disposable syringes used in blood donation which which get automatically broken after one is done. World Health Organization celebrates 14 June each year as World Blood Donor Day since it is the birthday of Karl Landsteiner who discovered the ABO blood group system.In Italy blood donors receive the blood donation as a paid day off from work,Singapore Red Cross society presents awards for  regular blood donors.

Blood donation in India:

Our country needs about 4 crore units of blood every year out of which only 40lakh units of blood are available, there is no known substitute to human blood. Normally 3 pints of blood is tranfused each time and 1 pint of blood can save upto 3 lives.Typical car accident victim could require 100 units of blood.

Sad fact is blood cannot be manfactured and happy fact is we all have that and which gets replenished after giving. An adult has 10 units of blood in their body and during blood donation they give about 1 unit.Not the whole blood is used for a patient and all blood is separated into components as Red blood cells, Platelets so each unit of blood can save upto 3 lives.

• The number one reason donors say they give blood is because they "want to help others."
• Two most common reasons cited by people who don't give blood are: "Never thought about it" and "I don't like needles."

  If you began donating blood at age 18 and donated every 90 days until you reached 60, you would have donated 30 gallons of blood, potentially helping save more than 500 lives!

1. Universal Donor: O- (negative) group
2. Universal Receiver: AB+( positive) group
3. Life of Blood Storage:
• Whole Blood : 35 Days
• RBC: 42 Days
• RDP: 5 Days
• FFP and Cryo: 1Year

Actor Chiranjavee in Andhra Pradesh did a noble act by starting a blood bank and making an innovative campaign by giving his autographed photos to every donor who did blood donation.That pulled lot of his fans into donating blood.Stars in India should leverage their fan power to such noble causes. Like Kamal Hassan does it for NACO and Surya does it for TANKER foundation and Amitabh and Aamir doing it for polio.

Platelets donation confusion:

Recently there was an instance of platelet donation for a girl in Cancer Hospital,Adyar.I had donated blood but never platelets and googling it proved dangerous as it had some frightening facts. Asking in some of my doctor friends and medi-staff painted another story.

Platelets donation can be done every 3 days

They take blood from us, discardiing only the platelets and inject back the platelet free blood again into system

It is as easy a process like blood donation

Blood donation process:

• You decide to give, making your heart bigger in process
• Fill up a form
• Blood sample is taken and tests is done
• Blood is taken out after checking for BP
• Gets over in about 20 minutes
• Also get our health stats like haemoglobin count,BP, etc
• Relax after drinking tea/juice and biscuits
• Proud that you have saved over three lives

 Just try it once it not just saves other's lives but more healthy for ourselves as well.

Give Blood, Give Life !!!!!

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