14
june
2024
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World Blood Donor Day
World Blood Donor Day is celebrated annually around the world on June 14th. The date marks the birthday of the Austrian physician and immunologist Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930 for the discovery of human blood groups.
The first World Blood Donor Day was held in 2004. Its success contributed to the adoption in 2005 at the 58th World Health Assembly of a resolution according to which this day began to be celebrated annually.
World Blood Donor Day aims to raise global awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products for transfusion and the importance of unpaid voluntary blood donation to national health systems. On this day, we express our sincere gratitude to those people who donate their blood, its components necessary to save human lives, and set a goal to draw attention to the need to participate in regular voluntary donation.
The 2024 World Blood Donor Day campaign is under the theme “Celebrating 20 years of donation: thank you, blood donors.” World Blood Donor Day is a special day celebrated in honor of unpaid blood donors. The goals of this event are to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products and, of course, to express gratitude to donors who voluntarily and freely provide their blood to save lives.
The campaign has the following goals:
- recognize and thank people who donate blood and encourage more people to become blood donors;
- encourage healthy people to donate blood regularly, as often as is safe and possible, to help improve the quality of life of transfusion-dependent patients and to contribute to the creation of safe blood supplies throughout the world;
- emphasize the enormous importance of voluntary, unpaid, regular blood and plasma donations to ensure universal access to safe blood products in all countries;
- mobilize governments and development partners to support, strengthen and finance national blood transfusion programs at national, regional and global levels.