Blood donation awareness campaign launched in Chennai

Chennai, Sep 24 (ANI): The Tamil Nadu government has launched a blood donation awareness campaign to encourage the youth of the country to donate blood and save lives.

The drive is aimed at encouraging the youth of the country to donate blood so that safe blood is available for use wherever and whenever it is needed.

"We are catching the young. Most of the venues are going to be the colleges. So this creates the peer pressure among students, when his friend is giving blood, he also feels that he will donate blood. If not today next month, he will come and say I will also donate blood," said R. Sriram, District Chairman for Blood and Organ Donation, Rotary International.

Sriram added that they are targeting 50,000 units of blood on a single day, which will save lives of at least 45,000 people.

The students who donated blood said they are proud to be part of this campaign.

"Every year we organise blood donation camps in our college premises. It is for a very good cause and we are very proud to donate blood. It saves so many people's life and all of us are proud to be part of this blood donation camp. Hope, it continues every year so that we can save many more lives." said Sopundaraya, a student.

About 6,32,000 people donated blood last year, out of which 5,81,000 people did it voluntarily.

The State Government is in the process of creating a Metropolitan Blood Bank at a cost of Rs. Four Billion as part of its move to increase the number of donors and for proper storage of collected blood.

A total of 258 blood banks are functioning in the state, out of which 83 are run by the state government, 14 by the central government and the remaining 181 by private organisations. (ANI)