Lakhs of people are suffering because of loss of blood. Many of these people lose their lives waiting for blood to be made available for them. Blood cannot be made artificially. You can increase blood in your body and even donate it to those in need.

Today 14^th June is blood donation day. World Blood Donor’s organisation requests all to celebrate this day by donating blood so that many lives can be saved. There are donors in Udaipur who have donated blood several times and saved lives. In the process, they also made new relations for life. There are many elderly people who are donating blood and saving lives of many a suffering youth.

Ravindra Pal Singh Kappu– Popularly known as Blood vale uncle, he is a blood bank on the move. He has inspired many people to donate blood. He has donated blood almost 81 times till date. He got inspired to donate blood at the age of 18 when one of his relatives was admitted to hospital due to loss of blood. Finding blood for her created a tension in everyone. This was the day when Ravindra Pal Singh Kappu started inspiring people to donate blood and save lives. Since then he has been regularly donating blood and even inspired his wife to do so. His wife has donated blood almost 14 times. His sons Ayush and Shivansh have donated blood 13 and 20 times respectively. Kappu has even organised more than 150 camps with the help of different organisations through which more than 5000 units of blood were collected. He even went ahead to distribute 10000 plus books and 25000 stickers related to blood donation awareness. 30 organisations of Udaipur celebrate Kappu’s birthday on 25^th July as Udaipur blood donation day. He has been felicitated more than 130 times for his selfless work.

Other inspirations of Lakecity are Dinesh Chordia (donated 64 times), Deepak Khandelwal (53 times), Pawan Thakur (52 times) and Rajesh Chaplot of Fatehnagar (52 times).  Saral Blood Bank was established in 2008 and since then it has collected 100000 units of blood and saved lives by providing platelets as well.

Kapil Daya, Kamlesh Acharya, Dilip Sahu and Dinesh Soni made their donors group three years back. They aim towards collecting negative blood groups as negative group is difficult to get.

If you wish to be a blood donor, you must:

• Be between 18 to 60 years of age
• Weigh more than 45 kgs
• Should not have a tattoo done prior to one month of blood donation
• Should not have donated blood in the past three months
• Should have haemoglobin more than 12.5
• Should have eaten something at least 2 hours prior to donating blood
• Should not be suffering from AIDS, TB, jaundice, malaria, diabetes etc.