A group of 18,000 blood do­na­tions con­tributes to sta­bil­ity of blood sup­ply in South Ko­rea

By
ESTABLISHED AFRICA
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Blood short­ages due to COVID-19 are preva­lent across the world. In Jan­u­ary, the Amer­i­can Red Cross de­clared “a na­tional blood cri­sis” pois­ing a great risk to pa­tient care. In March, a US-based non-profit or­ga­ni­za­tion Memo­r­ial Blood Cen­ters (MBC) de­clared the blood “emer­gency” due to a lack of the stock of type O blood at only 1-2 day sup­ply and ap­pealed to the pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in a sin­gle blood do­na­tion that can save up to three lives.

Accord­ing to the Red Cross, blood is used for a va­ri­ety of pur­poses, in­clud­ing se­ri­ous in­juries caused by ac­ci­dents, sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures, ane­mia, child­birth, and can­cer treat­ment. But since blood can­not be ar­ti­fi­cially pro­duced, ex­perts say the only so­lu­tion to the blood sup­ply lies in do­nat­ing blood.

In South Ko­rea, in co­op­er­a­tion with Heav­enly Cul­ture, World Peace and Restora­tion of Light (HWPL), 18,000 mem­bers of Shin­cheonji Church of Je­sus and HWPL par­tic­i­pated in blood do­na­tion for two weeks from April 18th. This num­ber was recorded as the largest group blood do­na­tion in the coun­try.

Youth members of Shincheonji Church of Jesus participated in the donation drive.

Nam­sun Cho, head of the Ko­rean Red Cross Blood Ser­vices, said, “When the im­pact of the Omi­cron reached its peak, Shin­cheonji Church of Je­sus launched a large scale of blood do­na­tion. It was like rain dur­ing a drought. We are sur­prised that the num­ber of donors ex­ceeded 6,000 in 3 days and more peo­ple par­tic­i­pated. We ap­pre­ci­ate their life-sav­ing ded­i­ca­tion.”

“They did a re­ally great job in the life-shar­ing move­ment. This scale is equiv­a­lent to one army corps do­nat­ing blood for a year. The num­ber of blood donors is nearly four times the num­ber in a nor­mal day, a great help in over­com­ing the cur­rent blood sup­ply cri­sis,” said an of­fi­cial from the Blood Ser­vices.

“We also ap­pre­ci­ate the mem­bers of the Shin­cheonji Church of Je­sus who par­tic­i­pated in the na­tion­wide plasma do­na­tion for the de­vel­op­ment of a treat­ment for COVID-19 back in 2020,” he added.

In South Ko­rea, blood do­na­tion cer­tifi­cates are is­sued to blood donors. The cer­tifi­cate can be used when pay­ing for a blood trans­fu­sion so that the trans­fu­sion fee to pa­tients is de­ducted. All the donors of Shin­cheonji Church of Je­sus and HWPL also do­nated their cer­tifi­cates to al­le­vi­ate the fi­nan­cial bur­den of pa­tients who need blood for treat­ment.

Shin­cheonji Church of Je­sus, head­quar­tered in Gwacheon, South Ko­rea, is con­tribut­ing to the com­mu­ni­ties through vol­un­teer ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing plasma and blood do­na­tions, al­though the church suf­fered greatly from the ini­tial stage of COVID-19 pan­demic.

HWPL, head­quar­tered in Seoul, South Ko­rea, is a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tion un­der the UN Eco­nomic and So­cial Coun­cil and De­part­ment of Global Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is car­ry­ing out long-term peace pro­jects through ed­u­ca­tion, re­lief, and youth em­pow­er­ment based on sol­i­dar­ity with civil so­ci­ety and in­ter­na­tional or­ga­ni­za­tions in 193 coun­tries.

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