The steering committees on voluntary blood donation and humanitarian healthcare held a meeting on April 14^th to review the voluntary blood donation and humanitarian healthcare campaigns in 2014.

Addressing the meeting, Vice State President Nguyen Thi Doan noted that both campaigns were crucial in the context of a difficult economic situation and in realising the Party and State social welfare policies. Moreover, it showed the Vietnamese people’s tradition of love for one another, and confirmed the righteousness of the policy in increasing social involvement in protecting and raising people’s health.

Health Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, head of the national steering committee on voluntary blood donation, said that in 2014, blood donations received great support from Party committees, authorities and communities. Accordingly, for the first time, the nation collected over 1 million units of blood which effectively dealt with any serious shortage of blood for emergency treatments.

The nation built up effective blood donation models. As of late 2014, the nation had 2,707 voluntary blood donation clubs with 113,241 members, an increase of 288 clubs and 3,673 members compared to 2013.

The Health Minister stressed that although blood donation had developed with an increase in the number of donors and the amount of blood collected, there remained shortages of blood for some medical treatment. Therefore, in 2015, the nation targets to collect some 1.2 million units of blood.

In terms of the humanitarian healthcare campaign which was held in 2014 for the first time, the organising committees said that they had organised 2,595 healthcare programs, providing free medicine worth over VND99 billion for over 1.1 million people. In addition, 353 healthcare consultancy programs were organised while 272,812 presents worth over VND60 billion given to extremely disadvantaged people.

According to the Vietnam Red Cross, the campaign promoted the strength of each agency in increasing the quality and efficiency of humanitarian healthcare activities across the country, thus strengthening social welfare policies of the Party and State.

In 2015, the campaign has set a target to provide healthcare for at least 1 million people in different parts of the country./.

( Compiled by VNF )