The slogan of the International Blood Donor Day is “Donating blood, you give life”

“Donating blood, you give life” – this is the international slogan under which is organized this year’s edition of the International Blood Donor Day. It is marked on June 14, on Karl Landsteiner’s birthday, the winner of the Nobel Prize for discovering the blood groups system AB0. According to the vice director of the Blood Transfusion Center, Svetlana Cebotari, the importance of this day lays in raising public awareness about the necessity to voluntarily, systematically and for free donate blood in order to save human lives. According to her, every blood donation can save at least 3 lives. Svetlana Cebotari noted that every blood donation gets through many tests for communicable diseases. In order to avoid “spoiled” blood, the donors are not paid anymore. The specialists noted an increase of the number of voluntary donors lately, especially, among young people. Therefore, along 2005, 18,500 youngsters aged 18-25 donated blood for the first time. Every 2 months, voluntary donors benefit of free investigations for several communicable diseases and a medical consultation. Annually, 80 million blood units in the world are donated, 38% of them in developing countries, where 82% of the world’s population lives. In Moldova, in 2005, as many as 60,188 blood units were collected, 53,744 taken from donors.