On June 9 in the morning MPs Yulii Mamchur and Iryna Sysoienko, as well as “Cyborg” Anatolii Svyryd, donated blood in the Blood Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The action was timed to the Blood Donor Day the world will celebrate on June 14. Public figures called on everyone to become donors and reminded of the problems connected with collecting blood in Ukraine.
Yulii Mamchur donated blood for the first time in his life. “It’s okay. The nurses are qualified, it’s not painful,” the MP shares his impressions, “Recently I saw on a social media an announcement made by the military hospital in Kyiv that we need to fill the blood bank, because after the battles in Mariinka a lot of reserves were taken to Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv. I responded. In the east the military actions are underway all the time and the soldiers get seriously wounded. Now, as a representative of the legislative power, I am showing that we all need to donate blood. Example is the most important thing. Like in the army, when someone shows an example, everyone follows it.”
People actively respond to the call to donate the blood. During the battles in Mariinka past week over 250 people became donors over three days in the Blood Center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “The activity of our civil population is high. There were more donors before, when we suffered higher losses. Now we are regulating the process. We need the blood to be fresh,” says the head of the Center of Blood of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, chief transfusiologist of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Anatolii Zamkovy. Today the supply of the blood from donors is enough to cover needs, but the battles in the Donbas are still underway, and the situation can change fast. When there are many wounded, there can be lack of rare types, B and AB, and rhesus-negative blood factor. In critical situations doctors appeal to volunteers and various organizations that help with donors.
In Ukraine there is a need to create a national blood bank, MP Iryna Sysoienko, the Deputy Head of the Parliamentary Committee for Health Protection emphasizes, “This is the question of national security, which is solved today maybe on the oblast level. Local centers of blood create reserves for themselves. We don’t know the possibilities of separate regions and are unable to react to different challenges. Nobody deals with this question on the national level,” Iryna Sysoienko emphasized. The Parliamentary Committee for Health Protection deals with the question of the national blood bank. The MPs want to include a draft law on establishment of this structure in the state budget for 2016.
“Cyborg” and head of the Coordination Center for Helping the Participants of the ATO Anatolii Svyryd has been donating blood from time to time. “Establishment of a blood bank is an urgent question. The soldiers must know that they will be helped in case there are problems or fierce battles. I also call upon the aware citizens to donate blood. It is painless and useful for your organism.”
