Voluntary blood donation event held in Dien Bien province

Dien Bien (VNA) – The Red Spring Festival, a voluntary blood donation event, is taking place in the northern mountainous province of Dien Bien on March 5, with more than 300 people coming to register.

This activity aims to encourage people in good health from all social strata to donate blood, helping to address the blood shortage in medical treatment after the Lunar New Year holiday, especially after a hiatus in donation activities due to the COVID-19 resurgence.

Disease prevention measures were carried out to ensure safety for participants, organisers said.

The event is expected to collect more than 210 blood units.

According to the Dien Bien steering committee for voluntary blood donation, this movement has been developing extensively and intensively in the province over the past years, with an increasing number of donors. Donation are now not limited to youngsters or State employees but have been expanded to people from all social strata.

Apart from the Red Spring Festival, other annual events to encourage blood donation have also been maintained, it noted, adding that clubs of blood donors have actively worked to serve emergency needs at the province’s general hospital. 

The National Steering Committee for Voluntary Blood Donation has set a goal to collect over 1.5 million blood units in 2021, with 99 percent of which donated by volunteers. The rate of blood donors in the population is hoped to reach 1.6 percent this year.

Director of the committee’s standing office Le Gia Tien said at a recent conference that last year, thanks to many initiatives and great efforts to overcome difficulties caused by COVID-19, the committee received approximately 1.4 million units of blood, helping millions of patients.

The majority of blood units were donated by volunteers, equivalent to nearly 1.5 percent of the population. Half of the givers donated their blood more than once./.