On June 14, 2011, countries worldwide will celebrate World Blood Donor Day with events to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products and to thank voluntary unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood.
The theme for World Blood Donor Day 2011 is, “More blood. More life.” This theme reinforces the urgent need for more people all over the world to become life-savers by volunteering to donate blood regularly.
Every year, countries throughout every region of the world organize a huge variety of events and activities to celebrate the day, from football matches to free concerts, and from mobile blood donation clinics to monumental decorations.
WHO and partners are encouraging communities everywhere to join the World Blood Donor Day 2011 campaign and “Paint the world red”, whether by symbolically colouring, covering or lighting monuments, popular landmarks and buildings in red; staging artistic, cultural or musical events with a red-coloured theme; or forming a “human blood drop” in prominent public places.
This is the first time that the global World Blood Donor Day event will be hosted in Latin America and the Government of Argentina welcomes the challenge!
Members of the Local Organizing Committee are actively working to plan an engaging variety of activities related to the global World Blood Donor Day 2011 event in line with this year’s theme “Más sangre. Más vida.” For example, the Domino Project is a central campaign initiative that will build momentum towards the global celebration on 14 June by mobilizing, one after the other, all regions of Argentina (Buenos Aires, the Central Region, Cuyo, the North-East Littoral and the North-Western Region and Patagonia) and neighbouring countries. The blood banks are working with the civil society to raise awareness and to promote voluntary and 100% non-remunerated blood donation.
Argentina launched its 2011 campaign regionally at the II National Conference of Blood Donors Organizations, coinciding with the celebration of the National Voluntary Blood Donor Day on 9 November 2010. Representatives from the Argentina Ministry of Health and members of the National Blood Plan, National Blood Banks and Blood Donors Associations of Argentina, participated in the two-day meeting, to share positive insights on the current situation of blood donation promotion in Argentina and look ahead to the coming five years.
