MTN tent receives more voluntary blood donors

Long before the MTN (Mobile Telephone Networks) tent opened, throngs of people queued outside to stake their lives on people they will never meet – people who donate their blood freely and unrewarded. The MTN tent was launched by the deputy minister of the Curative Medicine sector in the Ministry of Public Health and Population, Dr. Ghazi Ismail, to celebrate the World Blood Donor Day, June 14.

The tent was established by MTN, a local and international sharing GSM company, in cooperation with the National Blood Transfusion and Research Center in Sana’a to raise awareness of the need for blood donors. The tent started to receive the blood donors in June 11, and it was expected to stay for one week. “The tent presented a good example of the private and public sectors’ effective cooperation for improving the medical services in this society,” said Dr. Ismail. “We in the Ministry of Health, are ready to enter into a partnership with the private sector in different companies to provide people with good medical services.”

The executive manager of the MTN Yemen Company, Raed Ahmed, said that this activity comes within the company’s world campaign to present the different social services during 21 days of this month in 21 different countries. “We try to encourage the private sector to take responsibility towards this society and help the government in achieving this project and the other social and human programs, because we are a part of this society," Ahmed said. 

"The June 14 was chosen by the World Health Organization to annually celebrate and honor the voluntary non-remunerated blood donors. On this day, an increasing number of people, in all parts of the world, are waiting before blood banks to donate blood and to express a sense of responsibility in saving other people’s lives,” said Dr. Arwa Awn, the General Director of the center. 

According to Dr. Awn, the number of the voluntary blood donors has reached to 2,275 just during the past three years, from the opening of the center in June 2006 to May 2008, in addition to other 10,363 who donated blood for their relatives.  Dr. Awn said that the center also organized a lot of activities to celebrate this day. It also pays attention to bring joy to the child patients, especially the ones affected with cancer and different blood diseases.     However, the overwhelming majority of the world’s population does not have access to safe blood. Over 80 million units of blood are donated every year, but only 38 percent are collected in developing countries where 82 percent of the global population lives. 

Yet evidence from around the world demonstrates that voluntary unpaid donors are the foundation of a safe blood supply because they are least likely to transmit potentially life-threatening infections, such as HIV and hepatitis viruses, to the recipients of their blood. It is to these unsung heroes that World Blood Donor Day is dedicated.  This year’s theme is “Giving Blood Regularly” - an effort to commit volunteer blood donors to donate regularly and over long-term. This sense of social engagement and belonging displayed can be the foundation of a stable voluntary donor pool. It is an opportunity for every country to felicitate these givers of ‘life’ and for national transfusion services to reaffirm their efforts in providing them quality care. 

There are many benefits the blood donor can get from practicing this operation. It helps to reduce the chance of heart diseases, enhance the production of new red blood cells, fight hemochromitosis which is an iron overload disorder, burn calories, and invigorate feeling in elderly people. Apart from all these benefits a donor gets a blood test done before donating blood.       

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