HEALTH AUTHORITIES TO CELEBRATE WORLD BLOOD DONOR DAY
National Medical Laboratory Director Alfred Dofai speaking to the media as Acting Manager of the hospital blood bank Donald Tahani, speaking to the media. Photo credit: SIBC.
The Ministry of Health and Medical Services and its partners will commemorate World Blood Donor Day in Honiara tomorrow.
World Blood Donor Day is annually commemorated on June 14th.
This year’s theme is “Thank you for saving my life”.
Director of the country’s National Medical Laboratory, Alfred Dofai told a media conference over the weekend they will acknowledge a small group of faithful voluntary blood donors in the country during tomorrow’s event.
“During that event we will say thank you to those who keep on donating, a small group of people who keeps on donating blood to save our people’s lives in the hospital, so we would like to say thank you very to them for their service of free blood donation. Now we only encourage voluntary blood donation and not paid donations.”
Meanwhile, Blood Donor Recruitment officer of the Solomon Islands Red Cross, Kelton Sikala encouraged the public to attend the World Blood Donor Day celebrations tomorrow.
“We will have a day’s program and so we appeal to the public to come and enjoy the program and also support those who voluntarily donate blood, so come and be present at the program. There will be activities involved which will help us to understand the importance of blood and why we want to promote voluntary blood donation.”
SIBC News understands tomorrow’s program will be held at the SMI area, Town Ground, West Honiara.
However, speaking in today’s radio talk-back show at the national broadcaster, Medical Lab Acting Manager Donald Tahani says there is dire need for more blood at the National Referral Hospital.
“It’s just too low, it’s way below the calculations from our statistics records. Our records have shown that I’ll give you an example blood needed is around 8,000-9,000 units per year, that’s the average we’ve calculated for the last three years period, from 2011 to 2013. Yet our supply is just around 2,000-2,500, so you could see that big difference.”