World Blood Donor Day is celebrated each year on June 14 to raise awareness about blood donation, since its inception in 2005. The event is one of eight global public health campaigns led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and serves to “thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood.”
World Blood Donor Day also aims to raise awareness regarding the need for regular blood donations to “ensure that all individuals and communities have access to affordable and timely supplies of safe and quality-assured blood and blood products, as an integral part of universal health coverage and a key component of effective health systems.”
The host country for World Blood Donor Day 2019 is Rwanda.
In recognition of blood transfusion saving millions of lives every year, in May 2005, ministers of health from across the world made a unanimous declaration of commitment and support towards voluntary blood donation during the Fifty-Eighth World Health Assembly and designated World Blood Donor Day as an annual event to be held on June 14.
A resolution passed on the occassion urged Member States to implement, and support well organized, nationally-coordinated and sustainable blood programmes with appropriate regulatory oversight. In 2009, experts in transfusion medicine, policy-makers and nongovernmental representatives from 40 countries formulated the Melbourne Declaration, setting up a goal for all countries to obtain all their blood supplies from voluntary unpaid donors by 2020, according to the WHO.
The theme for World Blood Day 2019 is “Safe blood for all” and the campaign will raise awareness about the “universal need for safe blood in the delivery of health care and the crucial roles that voluntary donations play in achieving the goal of universal health coverage.”
The theme for World Blood Day 2019 “strongly encourages more people all over the world to become blood donors and donate blood regularly – actions which are key to building a strong foundation of sustainable national blood supplies that are sufficient to meeting the needs of all patients requiring transfusion.”
World Blood Day and the theme for 2019 are also a call to action to all “governments, national health authorities and national blood services to provide adequate resources and put in place systems and infrastructures to increase collection of blood from voluntary, regular unpaid blood donors; to provide quality donor care; to promote and implement appropriate clinical use of blood, and to set up systems for the oversight and surveillance on the whole chain of blood transfusion.”
The WHO lists several objectives of World Blood Donor Day including celebrating individuals who donate blood and to encourage others to start donating and highlight the need for committed, year-round blood donation, to maintain adequate supplies and achieve universal and timely access to safe blood transfusion.
