Blood and blood products are essential but incredibly scarce commodity, especially in our environment with a lot of patients needing these products to sustain life at crucial times. Passionate about service to humanity and saving lives in her environment, Dr. Farida Nuhu organized a blood drive to create awareness, get people to donate blood willingly and also help them cultivate the habit of blood donation. This blood drive program was used to mark her birthday. It held at the Riverplate Park, Abuja on the 19th of June – a day annually set aside as the “World Sickle Cell Day” – which also coincide as her birthday.
In support of this act of humanity, a lot of medical personnel who are the celebrant’s colleagues, friends and well wishers were in attendance, even passers-by, to donate and help in the process of blood donation. Partners that collaborated to make the drive a success included Haima Health Initiative, National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS), Abuja and Arise TV. At the end of the event, about 80 people attended and a total of 52 pints of blood was donated. After the donation, each pint is to be screened, stored and distributed on a needs basis by the NBTS.
“Everyday, there is a blood appeal from one hospital or the other, Haima Health Initiative receives a lot of these appeals, once we have a particular blood type that is needed, and the details are confirmed, the blood can be dispatched to the appropriate blood bank for further testing before it is used by the patient. It is all completely free of charge.” said, one of the volunteers.
Speaking with one of the Co-Organized, Dr Azeezat, She said, “This was a brilliant initiative, it helped to bring people together for a common goal, and especially brought new donors (we had a lot of first time donors), we answered all questions that individuals had and helped to clear misconceptions and myths surrounding blood donation. There is still a lot of work to be done in the donation space, especially organ donation (blood being one of those organs) because a lot of people have fears and misconceptions that need to be allayed. If we can take care of most of these fears, blood donation culture will get even better in the near future. We hope to host another drive sometime in September for Sickle Cell Awareness Month, and also in January for another Doctor’s birthday. We hope to make it as regular as possible so as to spread more awareness and improve blood donation and impact as many lives as possible.”
The event was an all-round great one with lots of fun activities to put donors and volunteers at ease and in the merry birthday party mood, while they donate blood to save lives. There was music, games, lots of refreshments – given to donors for energy boost after donating blood – and free T-shirts for participants, courtesy of the Haima Health Initiative.
