By: Ewoenam Kpodo | Voltaonlinegh.com |
MTN Ghana Foundation, the social responsibility wing of telecoms giants, MTN in collaboration the regional hospital, has held its annual Valentine’s Day blood donation exercise at Awudome Senior High School, Tsito in the Volta Region with a call on the citizenry to cultivate the habit of blood donation to save lives.
The exercise on Thursday, dubbed “Save a Life Campaign”, saw dozens of students of the school, staff of MTN and some members of the public donate blood voluntarily in a bid to replenish blood banks in selected hospitals across the country including the Volta Regional Hospital popularly known as Trafalgar Hospital.
Regional Team Lead, MTN, Mawuli Katahena in an interview with journalists on the sidelines of the exercise, said MTN as a company driven with the desire to show love and ensure a healthy community, instituted the blood donation exercise on February 14, 2011 as an annual event for MTN staff only but had to extend it to the general public to save more lives.
Mr. Katahena who was expecting a minimum of about 150 units of blood from the exercise, said there was the need to show love and the more appropriate way to show love was through blood donation because it involved human life.
“It is believed that as you donate blood, you show love and you save a life so every pint of blood that you donate, you save a life.”
“And we don’t want a situation where people will go to the hospital especially mothers, to give birth and there’s no blood at the blood bank and because of that they will pass away,” he stressed.
Volta Regional Blood Donation Organiser based at Trafalgar Hospital, Vincent Kwashie Fekpe lauded MTN Ghana for the initiative saying, “if not for this exercise, in a few week’s time, we’ll be crying for blood to give to patients at the various hospitals in the Ho Municipality and the region as a whole.”
To Mr. Fekpe, community blood donation in the region “is very low” forcing his outfit to rely on schools, adding that churches except the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Ghana and Volta chapter, (who carry out blood donation exercise twice in a year), “do very little to help.”
He blamed the situation on a number of factors including attitudes of people in terms of benefits, low level of education, beliefs and also unavailability of vehicles to facilitate movement into communities for education on the importance of voluntary blood donation.
He therefore welcomed support in all forms from citizens of the region and philanthropists to improve on the activities of the regional blood bank to continue to save more lives.
Volunteers who spoke to Voltaonlinegh.com said they were donating blood to support the great initiative of MTN Ghana Foundation to contribute to the health of Ghanaians especially in addressing maternal mortality in the country.
Source: www.voltaonlinegh.com
