New Delhi, Oct 1 (PTI) On National Voluntary Blood Donation Day on Friday, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan appealed to people to donate blood for a noble cause and motivate their friends, relatives and colleagues to do so.

He also underscored the importance of non-remunerative blood donation motivated by altruism alone, a Health Ministry statement said.

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Bhushan, along with Director General of Health Services Sunil Kumar, inaugurated a voluntary blood donation camp at Nirman Bhawan. The camp was followed by a technical seminar on the subject.

National Voluntary Blood Donation Day is celebrated on October 1 of every year to raise awareness about blood donation and promote voluntary blood donation in the country.

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On this occasion, various government and non-government organisations organise blood donation camps and other awareness activities across the country.

The theme for this year's blood donation event is 'Give Blood and keep the world beating', the statement said.

Blood is the most essential component of body and timely transfusion can save several lakh lives every year, especially for injury cases, children suffering from blood disorders such as thalassemia and sickle cell anaemia.

"Our country needs approximately 1.45 crore units of blood every year. Collection of blood is done through 3,500 licensed blood banks in the country," the statement said.

The statement said, "About three decades back, a large percentage of blood collected was through professional donors which comprised among others high-risk group population like commercial sex workers, transgenders, men having sex with men and intravenous drug users. The inclusion of such vulnerable category for the motive of monetary gain led to spread of blood transmitted infections like HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, etc. in the entire community."

"The landmark Supreme court judgement in 1996 banned the professional blood donation in the country and that was a game changer and more and more voluntary and replacement donations came into being. The National Blood Policy developed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 2002 recommended that the practice of even replacement donors shall be gradually phased out in a time bound manner to achieve 100 per cent voluntary non-remunerated blood donation," it said.

The ministry has made mandatory testing of each unit of blood collected for five transfusion transmissible infections (TTI) viz. HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Syphilis and Malaria using high quality testing methodology. Because of these measures, there has been a sharp decline in the blood transmitted infections, the statement said.

At the moment India is able to collect only 70 per cent blood through voluntary blood donation and the rest 30 per cent is through replacement donation which calls for greater awareness generation among the common public, the statement said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)