On the 14th of June, which is World Blood Donor Day, when we see the company blood drives, web banners and blood collection stations at shopping centres every year, we’re prompted to take half an hour or so to part with roughly 450 ml of blood to help blood banks maintain their supplies of blood products to patients who we will never meet.
However, while these much-needed blood drives may see an annual increase in voluntary donations, once World Blood Donor Day passes, we return to our lives, often forgetting how valuable each donation can be.
Still, we assume blood will be there if a loved one is involved in a serious accident, if a mother experiences complications during childbirth, a child requires treatment for severe anaemia or if a patient undergoing surgery suddenly needs a transfusion.
World Blood Donor Day 2026 has come and gone, but the need for blood has not disappeared. Once the campaign ends, hospitals, clinics and emergency rooms continue to rely on blood donations every day of the year.
The reason blood is available in those moments is that someone chose to donate long before the emergency happened. Blood shortages continue to affect many African countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly highlighted the gap between demand and supply across the region, with shortages contributing to avoidable deaths among women, children and people with traumatic injuries. ¹ ²
Blood should never be taken for granted. In Kenya, we face a critical blood supply shortage: approximately 10 people need a blood transfusion every 10 minutes, but voluntary donations fall significantly short of World Health Organisation (WHO) targets.3
The strongest blood systems are not built through emergency appeals. They are built when healthy individuals donate regularly, helping blood services maintain supplies before a crisis occurs. Most people do not see everything that happens after their donations are collected and their lives resume as normal.
Patients rarely think about blood screening when they receive a transfusion, but the safety of the blood supply depends on it. Before donated blood reaches a patient, it is screened, tested, processed, stored and transported through a carefully managed system designed to protect both donors and recipients.
Modern laboratory technologies help detect transfusion-transmissible infections such as HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis, strengthening the safety of blood supplies and helping ensure that patients receive blood that has been appropriately screened. ⁴
The importance of this work often goes unnoticed because, when everything functions as it should, patients never see it. They see a bag of blood. However, behind it sits an entire network of healthcare workers, blood services, laboratories and logistics systems working together to make that transfusion possible.
Every healthcare professional can think of patients whose treatment depended on blood being available at the right moment. Trauma patients, mothers experiencing severe bleeding, cancer patients, transplant recipients and many others share one thing in common: none of them can predict when they will need blood.
In recent years, we have seen incredible progress in innovations that can deliver more blood to patients. Serology and nucleic acid testing (NAT) solutions offer more accurate detection of infections, ensuring safer blood supplies.6
We have seen countries like Rwanda using drone technology to ensure that blood reaches remote areas quickly, reducing maternal deaths and improving emergency care.5
We have the technology and the will to get blood to those who need it. But without willing blood donors, we will still fall short of what is needed to keep our health systems thriving and patients surviving.
Yes, World Blood Donor Day has passed us by. But if there is one message I hope more of us will take from World Blood Donor Month, it is that blood donation is needed not only during campaigns or awareness drives.
The donation itself may take only a short time, but its impact could last a lifetime for someone you will never meet.
¹ World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa. World Blood Donor Day 2023 message. Available at: https://www.afro.who.int/regional-director/speeches-messages/world-blood-donor-day-2023
² World Health Organization. World Blood Donor Day campaign information. Available at: https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-blood-donor-day
³ Nation FM – Did you know: https://www.facebook.com/Nationfm/videos/did-you-know-that-every-10-minutes-10-kenyans-urgently-need-blood-to-save-their-/675741907939857/
⁴ Seed CR, et al. Advances in blood screening and transfusion safety. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/vox.13534
⁵ Wired. How drones transformed blood delivery in Rwanda. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/drones-have-transformed-blood-delivery-in-rwanda/
6 Improved Safety of Nucleic Acid Amplification Technology. Available at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12924692/
