Blood donation rates are low worldwide. In an attempt to increase donations and battle the shortage, an initiative in Sweden provides a text message to let donors know when their blood has been put to use, potentially saving a life.
The aspect of knowing that your blood has been used provides a different perspective of the process and could potentially bring donors back more frequently.
“We are constantly trying to develop ways to express [donors’] importance,” Karolina Blom Wiberg, a communications manager at the Stockholm blood service told The Independent. “We want to give them feed back on their effort, and we find this is a good way to do that.”
The program was created in Stockholm three years ago and has received positive responses, inspiring expansion throughout the country.
“It’s a great feeling to know you made such a big difference and maybe even saved someone else’s life,” said Wiberg. “We get a lot of visiblity in social media and traditional media thanks to the SMS. But above all we believe it makes our donors come back to us, and donate again.”
Most Western countries are seeing a decrease in blood donations. As The Independent reported, according to NHS figures, there are 40 per cent fewer donors in Britain today than there were ten years ago.
For those who have donated before, you know how irritating it can be to get constant phone calls asking for another donation – which sounds terrible. Even for those who really want to help, calls asking you to do something when you’re already busy are just easy to resist. (I worked part-time in college as a telerecruiter for a community blood center, and very rarely was anyone happy to hear from me.)
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
But if you really knew when your blood was being used and could actually have a sense of your impact in real time, perhaps we would all donate more.
Hopefully this initiative will take off in many more countries around the world.
Photo: Flickr user Canadian Blood Services
