Eight Londoners resorted to circulatory system body art to raise awareness for blood donation. With the Summer Olympics and an enormous number of tourists just around the corner, the initiative is worth some applause.
The blood crisis is a problem in hospitals from all around the world, and hopefully the action of these 8 Londoners will encourage not only people from the UK to donate blood. Since their story is covered by many online publications all over the Web, a great number of people should become aware of this problem and come to the rescue.
Jon Latham, spokesman for UK’s National Health Service, stated that “This year we have a unique situation and need the public’s help to counterbalance the inevitable dip in donations as people celebrate a memorable summer for the country. Every unit of blood saves or improves the life of three people. We obviously want to make sure everyone enjoys the Games, and want to make sure that if there are any accidents we have the blood supplies to help them recover quickly.”
The Summer Olympic Games are not the only major event that takes place in the UK in the near future. The country will also host the Diamond Jubilee, Wimbledon, the European Championships and numerous other events that each have a significant attendance. The need for blood increases because of two reasons. First of all, the great number of tourists implies a greater risk of accidents. Secondly, local people get carried away with so many distractions and they forget about donating blood, in case this action was on their schedules, at all.
The 8 blood donors who took part in this campaign walked the streets dressed in nothing but underwear and body art. Besides the incredibly detailed circulatory system, each of them had their blood type on their chest. The fact that they come from different ethnic groups stands to show that we are all the same and that blood can save lives regardless of the skin color, gender or age of the donor.
The campaign started by NHS Blood and Transplant is utterly original and it is a real pity that in some countries nothing is done for raising the awareness for blood donation.
Have you donated blood recently? If not, are you planning to do this in the future?
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