MTN Ghana is seeking to collect about 6,000 units of blood nationwide as a way of showing love to Ghanaians on Valentine’s Day.
The goal is to restock blood banks across the country to enable health facilities to respond to emergency and critical cases where blood transfusion is needed to save lives.
Over 27,000 units of blood have so far been collected by the telecommunication giants in collaboration with health facilities since 2011 when the annual event commenced.
In the Ashanti Region, students of three Senior High Schools – Prempeh College, Serwaa Nyarko Girls SHS, and Kumasi High School have donated blood to mark the day in Kumasi.
Some teachers of the various schools and staff of MTN also donated during the exercise supervised by health professionals from the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).
Nii Adotey Mingle, General Manager (Sales) of MTN Ghana in charge of the Northern Sector, said the company for the past 13 years had been organising blood donation every Valentine’s Day as part of its co
rporate social responsibility.
He said the motivation for the exercise was to improve healthcare delivery in Ghana by ensuring availability of blood to save lives.
‘You will notice that getting blood to the blood bank is usually voluntary and what they get constitutes about 36 per cent of the required blood in the blood banks so we come in to fill the gap,’ he noted.
He said since it was a voluntary exercise, they always chose places where they could get as many people as possible to donate hence the decision to conduct the exercise in schools.
Dr. Lesley Osei, Head of Transfusion Medicine Unit of KATH, said having adequate blood in the bank was critical to saving the lives of accident victims, cancer, sickle cell patients as well as pregnant women.
She said stocking the KATH blood bank would not only inure the benefit of patients in the facility, but those in other facilities in the region who were also supplied through the Zipline services.
She applauded MTN Ghana for organisisng the life-saving event
every year, saying that donating blood was the best gift anyone could offer on Valentine’s Day.
Source: Ghana News Agency