“Safe blood for safe motherhood” is the international slogan of this year’s edition of the World Donor Day. June 14 was declared the World Donor Day, because the Austrian doctor Karl Landsteiner was born on this day. In 1930 he received the Nobel Prize for his development in 1901 of the modern system of classification of blood groups ABO, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to ex-director of the Blood Transfusion Centre, at present Director-general of the Sanitary-curative and recovery Association of the Government Office Larisa Catrinici, the importance of these day lays in informing the civil society about the necessity of voluntarily donating blood in order to save human lives. The blood, which runs through the heart of every donor, is one of the most significant ways to prove that one cares about the others, of their life and health”, Larisa Catrinici told Info-Prim Neo. According to the quoted source, by means of this human gesture the donors offer a chance to survive to other persons. More, each blood donations can save at least 3 persons. Asked if the blood is safe, Larisa Catrinici said that each donor is tested, and each donation is verified in the laboratory in order to exclude the possibility of transmitting a disease through the blood. In order to make the donation process safer the donors are not paid anymore, excluding in this way the possibility to have donors who do not recognize they have a disease in order to receive money. Larisa Catrinici says that the number of donors is increasing lately, especially young. In 2006, 68 thousand persons donated blood. It is forecasted that the number of donors will reach 75 thousand persons this year. The benefits are not only the regeneration of the body, but also the fact that every two months the voluntary donors benefit from free investigations and a medical consultation. About 80 mln units of blood are being donated in the entire world, of which 38% in the developing countries where about 82% of the population lives.