On ‘World Blood Donor Day’ We Salute Kiran Verma from Delhi Who’s on a Mission Walking 21,000 km for Blood Awareness in India. km had started his walk from Thiruvananthapuram on 28th Dec 2021 and made a pitstop in Mangaluru on Christmas Day-25th Jan 2022, and the next day proceeded to Udupi, Wayanad, Coimbatore, Madurai and other parts of Tamil Nadu- and right now he is in West Bengal having walked more than 13,400 km on foot in 176 districts, across 12 states and Union Territories in 18 months
Mangaluru: Today 14 June ‘World Blood Donor Day’ is celebrated all over the World, including India. The Day provides a special opportunity to celebrate and thank voluntary blood donors around the world for their gift of blood and has become a major focus for action towards achieving universal access to safe blood transfusion. Every single donation is a precious lifesaving gift and repeat donation is the key to building a safe and sustainable blood supply.
Everywhere, including Mangaluru at present, blood services face the challenge of making sufficient blood available, while also ensuring its quality and safety. One of WHO’s strategies is to assist low- and middle-income countries in improving the availability and quality of human plasma, including optimising the utilisation of the plasma recovered from whole blood donations and increasing patient’s access to life-saving plasma protein therapies. The slogan for the 2023 World Blood Donor Day campaign is “Give blood, give plasma, share life, share often.”
It focuses on patients requiring life-long transfusion support and underlines the role every single person can play, by giving the valuable gift of blood or plasma. It also highlights the importance of giving blood or plasma regularly to create a safe and sustainable supply of blood and blood products that can be always available, all over the world, so that all patients in need can receive timely treatment. The objectives are to: Celebrate and thank individuals who donate blood and encourage more people to become new donors; encourage people in good health to donate blood regularly, as often as is safe and possible, to transform the quality of life for transfusion-dependent patients and help to build a secure blood supply in all countries in the world; highlighting the critical roles of voluntary non-remunerated regular blood and plasma donations in achieving universal access to safe blood products for all populations; and mobilize support at national, regional and global levels among governments and development partners to invest in, strengthen and sustain national blood programmes.
And here we have a young man from Delhi, who is on a Mission walking 21,000 km across India to bring awareness to Blood Donation. On ‘World Blood Day’ we Salute Kiran Verma from Delhi Who started his walk from Thiruvananthapuram on 28th Dec 2021 and had made a pitstop in Mangaluru on Christmas Day-25th Jan 2022, and next day proceeded to Udupi, Wayanad, Coimbatore, Madurai and other parts of Tamil Nadu- and right now he is in West Bengal having walked more than 13,400 km on foot in 176 districts, across 12 states and Union Territories in 18 months. Before reaching Mangaluru, he had walked through Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Dadar Nagar and Daman and Diu, Gujarat, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and ending his walk in West Bengal).
Speaking to Team Mangalorean over the phone Kiran said, ” This walk is going to be the “longest blood awareness campaign ever by an individual in the world” which will run for more than two years. The mission of the walk is to spread awareness about blood donation among people so that “Nobody should die waiting for blood in India after 31st December 2025. Due to COVID voluntary blood donation in India has gone significantly down in the last three years. This is to encourage around 5 million new blood donors to donate blood so that blood banks and hospitals don’t run dry on blood”.
Till now he has walked more than 13,400 km on foot across 176 districts, across 12 states and UTs in 18 months. On 9th April 2023, Kiran Verma was also invited to the popular and much-watched Kapil Sharma Show; To support his walk 107 blood donation camps have been organized in different parts of the country through which more than 22,640 units of blood have been collected.
Apart from the camps, more than 7000 individual blood donors have donated blood in their personal capacity at different blood banks across India and abroad to support this campaign. On 15th September 2022, Kiran Verma inaugurated a blood bank in Hyderabad in the name of PV Narasimha Rao’s name built by their family members; Also a 3.5 km Marathon was also organized in Varanasi where more than 100 people participated. Having completed his walk between Malda and Siliguri, his next destination after West Bengal will be North East India.
The story behind the cause, Kiran Verma said, “I started Simply Blood when my blood was sold to a poor family (from Raipur, Chhattisgarh) in Delhi who went into prostitution to pay medical bills for her husband’s treatment. On 26 Dec 2016, I got a call from a person who said that there is a poor family from Raipur; Chhattisgarh who needs blood and I went to the hospital to donate blood to that family. After donating blood I went to meet the family and got to know that the person who called me had taken Rs. 1500 for the blood, which I had donated for free. I also got to know that the lady who paid for his blood had gotten into prostitution to pay medical bills. It was hard to digest for me and on the same day I left my job and took this as my goal “Nobody should die because of lack of blood by 2025 in India”.
“Everyday more than 12,000 people fail to get blood in India, due to which more than 3 million people died waiting for blood. If 5 million youth start donating blood, then there will be not even a single death due to the non-availability of blood in India. Recently every person must have gone through Plasma Crisis during the second wave of COVID. Also there is a huge blood shortage in blood banks across India as people are scared of donating blood at hospitals. It all happened, as WE DON’T HAVE A CULTURE OF DONATING BLOOD IN INDIA. To reach that goal, we have to engage people and our community, which can make our dream possible. This walk is only to make it happen” added Kiran.
To know about Kiran Verma a Delhi-based social worker who founded “Change With One Foundation” under which he runs two programs “Simply Blood” and “Change With One Meal”. In 2018, Kiran Verma travelled 16,000 km across India covering more than 6,000 km on foot only for the same cause. Simply Blood – This is the world’s first virtual blood donation platform, connecting blood donors and seekers in real time (just like Uber) without charging anything to anyone. It was launched on 29th January 2017 and to date saved more than 35,000 potential lives through blood donation. Change With One Meal – This is an initiative where we serve unlimited meals for Rs 10 in Delhi. To date, they have served more than 4,00,000 meals in the last year.
If you want to support Kiran Verma, the Founder of Simply Blood in his Mission, you can call him at 9810670347
