Partnership for safe blood
7 April 2000

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is joining the World Health Organization (WHO) as a partner in promoting blood safety initiatives throughout the world on 7 April, World Health Day. The theme of this year's World Health Day is Safe blood starts with me.

One of the strongest advocates for voluntary, non-remunerated donation has always been the International Federation. The lack of a national blood policy has hampered its efforts to sustain blood programmes in some countries and weakened its community education campaigns designed to motivate new donors and to retain people as regular donors.

The partnership between WHO and the International Federation on World Health Day is timely for several reasons: Last October all 176 Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies adopted a special "blood policy", aimed at further developing a culture of quality and safety in all Red Cross and Red Crescent Blood Services;

Most National Societies are keeping the recruitment and retention of voluntary non-remunerated blood donors as a main focus of activities for the next decade;

Red Cross and Red Crescent Youth programmes, which actively promote voluntary, non-remunerated blood donation, provide an opportunity to recruit and educate the next generation of blood donors;

In recent years Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have demonstrated that quality programmes and guidelines can be implemented across cultures and into different environments. As an example, Honduras and Thailand have integrated successful quality programmes in their blood services.

"World Health Day, with its focus on individual responsibility - Safe blood starts with me - reminds ordinary people that they have a role to play in global blood safety by leading a healthy lifestyle. Individual action is a good investment for the self and for the community", underlines Federation Under-Secretary general Ibrahim Osman.

The partnership between WHO and the International Federation may also help bring about successful partnerships at the country level with other key organizations. In this way, appropriate national programmes and policies can be instituted to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of existing blood services. Furthermore, having 105 million Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers available to help implement such programmes gives this partnership a strong basis at the grassroots level.

More than one hundred National Societies are involved in this activity.

For further information or to arrange interviews please contact:

Marie-Françoise Borel, Information Officer Tel: (41 22) 730 4346

The International Federation, the ICRC and the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies together constitute the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.