Helping save lives

To tide over shortage of blood and promote blood donation, D 3030 conducted mega blood donation camps across the district during the first week of July. Rotarians and their family, Rotaractors and general public participated in these camps which helped to collect over 1,000 units of blood.

“The camps were part of Pan India Blood Donation, a dream project of our RI Director,” said District Governor K S Rajan.  All the 96 clubs of the district participated in the project.

“Blood donation is one of the prime needs of the country. We Rotarians should serve as role models for this valuable cause and inspire people around us to donate blood that would save precious lives,” said RI Director C Basker, inaugurating the project at Nagpur.

Clubs organised public awareness programmes and partnered with blood banks in various localities and the Indian Medical Association for storage of the collected blood. “We have appealed to the blood banks to reserve 10 per cent of the collected blood to help the poor,” said Rajan, adding that storage was still a challenge in rural areas. The district is planning global grants to install blood storage facilities in those places.

Other healthcare initiatives

This year, the district is working on campaigning for ‘Tuberculosis Free India’, in association with the GoI and WHO. “We will model it similar to Rotary’s polio eradication campaign,” said Rajan who has also worked for many PolioPlus projects in the district.  “Unlike polio, presently there is no vaccine available for the disease. Cure is also a tough process. So, we should focus on prevention and it can be done only by creating awareness.”