The Russian Red Cross (RRC) will support NPOs and initiative groups in their work to promote blood donation through the "Culture of Blood Donation" project, Pavel Savchuk, President of the Russian Red Cross, told the XIV All-Russian Forum of the Blood Service.
The forum was held on April 28-29 in Nizhny Novgorod. On Thursday, April 28, with the support of FMBA of Russia, the RRC held the Russian National Conference on improvement of mechanisms to promote blood and bone marrow donation.
“Our goal is to form a national community of blood and bone marrow donors by recruiting potential donors and retaining regular ones, uniting them on an online information platform, increasing their activity through online and offline interventions, and stimulating self-governance within the donor community. For this purpose, we launched the Culture of Blood Donation project. In its framework the RRC will support NPOs and initiative groups to promote donation by providing them with necessary resources”, said Pavel Savchuk.
Instruments available to donors in the near future: educational practices, webinars, and rewards, according to Pavel Savchuk.
“Tools for business, NPOs and initiative groups will be developed together with the FMBA of Russia. Our initiative was supported by Veronika Skvortsova. We plan to actively involve corporate communities, organizations and companies which can also join the blood donation movement. The Russian Red Cross will be a driver for development of the corporate blood donation system,” specified the RRC President.
Pavel Savchuk added that recently the RRC held a conference with participation of more than a hundred representatives of NPOs, the Blood service and regional blood transfusion stations. The conference topics were promotion of blood donation, development of responsible and regular blood donation culture in Russia, and the role of NPOs and businesses in creating an ecosystem of the blood donor movement in the country.
There were the following speakers at the panel discussion “Eco-system of the blood donor movement: topical issues of effective interaction between its participants”: Olga Eichler, Head of the Medical Support Department for Extreme Care and Blood Services of FMBA of Russia, Director of National Foundation for Healthcare Development, Olesya Nazarova, Director of the RRC Medical and Social Programs Department, Elena Stefanyuk, Deputy Head of the Blood Donor Coordination Council at the RF Civic Chamber, Maria Yakunchikova, Head of the Russian Public Movement “Medical Volunteers” and Dmitry Bazhenov, Deputy Director General for Commerce at GSPI, LLC. The experts discussed cooperation among Blood service institutions, NPOs, initiative groups and blood donation businesses.
“We are determined to increase our involvement and presence in the development of blood and bone marrow donation. Our goal is to foster favorable environment for development of the donor community in Russia. And we will do our best to achieve it,” Olesya Nazarova said at the conference.
Olga Eichler, Head of the Medical Support Department for Extreme Care and Blood Services of the RF Federal Medical and Biological Agency, Director of the National Foundation for Healthcare Development, said: “Our structure includes more than 400 organizations that work with donors: large stations, all branches, federal and regional blood transfusion stations. “This is a large number of institutions that are interested in collaboration with the nonprofit sector, volunteers, because informing and promoting donation is very important. We are proud to develop VNRBD, it's our trend, and our goal. It is wrong to build our work by motivating people with some kind of commercial and material benefits. Therefore, development of voluntary donation is a priority for the Blood Service,” she noted.
Elena Stefanyuk, Deputy Head of the Blood Donor Coordinating Council at the RF Civic Chamber, spoke about the measures to support participation of volunteers and donor movement organizers. She said, “now it is impossible to imagine the work of the Blood Service without NPOs and volunteer organizations”.
“The Russian Red Cross launched a large donor campaign to promote blood donation as part of its rebranding. The Blood Donor Coordinating Council at the RF Civic Chamber also deals with this issue; we constantly update information and methodological materials to advocate for blood and bone marrow donation,” said Elena Stefanyuk.
According to Maria Yakunchikova, Chairwoman of the Russian Public Movement “Medical Volunteers”, “they have been attracting people to become regular donors since 2017, and every year our volunteers across the country manage to collect more than 19 tons of donor blood.” “The most important issue is to expand community of regular blood donors, and to keep in touch with them. To this end, medical volunteers organize educational events among potential donors on a constant basis,” said the Chairwoman of the Russian Public Movement “Medical Volunteers.”
Dmitry Bazhenov, Deputy Director General for Commerce at GSPI LLC, spoke about interaction with blood institutions, plans to move mobile Blood Transfusion Stations (BTS) and hold blood donations in local towns. In his opinion, “products to be developed by the Russian Red Cross and Blood Services can be unified and adapted for the corporate sector." "It is important for the corporate sector to create a platform for discussing our efforts and giving feedback on the important challenges,” said Dmitry Bazhenov.
The conference included a number of interactive events: a networking session, master class, training session and foresight session. The participants worked with real cases and discussed new formats for disseminating reliable information about blood and bone marrow donation.
Also, the results of the Russian Contest of Professional Excellence of the Blood Service were summed up. In 2022, on the initiative of the Russian Red Cross, the Russian Red Cross Donor Award was established as part of the nomination “When Hearts Beat in Unison”. Certificates for support from the Russian Red Cross were awarded to:
1. The autonomous non-profit organization Center for Social Projects “Volga Donor”.
2. The Murmansk Regional Public Donor Organization A Drop of Life.
3. The Krasnoyarsk regional branch of the Russian Student Lifeguard Corps.
