For these blood donors, serving humanity a passion

Ajay Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar June 14

“It is important to remember that blood donation not only brings a change in another person’s life but also makes you feel good about the noble deed,” said Amanjot Singh Dhall, who is actively running his blood donation organisation for the past eight years and has donated blood for 36 times.

While talking to Jalandhar Tribune, Amanjot (25) further said, it is a fact that if it were not for blood donors, many people would not be alive today. Until 2015, Amanjot, who is a social worker as well, ran his blood donation drive through a Facebook page. Initially, he started connecting with the residents on the Facebook to reach out to the patients in need of blood.

Currently, he is the vice-president of the city-based NGO, “The Blood Association” which he formed in partnership with Vardan Chadha and Jatinder Soni in 2015. The NGO has so far organised more than 100 blood donation camps and has collected five thousand units of blood. The blood banks of the district which usually remain out of stock, are supplied with blood units by The Blood Association only and most of the patients of Thalassemia at the Civil Hospital.

The team of the NGO also motivates people to donate blood. Having donated blood for 123 times and blood platelets for 93 times Subedar Major Suresh Saini and Jatinder Soni, who has also donated blood for 123 times have became a motivational figure for people to donate blood.

Moreover, Amanjot and his team has also made a concerted effort to curb corruption that prevails in the blood banks of various city-based hospitals.

He said as per the government guidelines, the blood bank of every hospital has to provide a fifty-rupee diet to every donor, but due to the negligence of authorities most of the blood bank officials used to save this money in their accounts and donors were returned without refreshments.

After initial struggle, the NGO forced the authorities to place a list outside every blood bank that would make the donors aware of the diet to be taken after donating blood.

Meanwhile, the team members have gone to Nepal for participating in World Blood Donors Day.