Scores of Tamale residents including students on Valentine’s Day, which signifies love, responded positively to a blood donation exercise organized by the MTN Ghana Foundation, meant to re-stock blood banks of the various health facilities in the Tamale metropolis and across the country.
In the Northern Region, the blood donation exercise, took place simultaneously at MTN’s service centre at Zogbeli, Tamale as well as some educational institutions – the Tamale SHS, Vittin SHS, and University for Development Studies (UDS), Dungu campus.
It formed part of MTN’s annual blood donation exercise dubbed “save a life” which was on break for two years due to Covid-19 pandemic.
Senior Manager for sustainability and social impact at MTN, Robert Kuzoe, reiterated the Foundation’s commitment towards the improvement in health care delivery in Ghana.
According to him, since the inception of the “save a life” initiative in 2011, over 20,000 pints of blood has been collected from all 16 regions of the country and this year’s campaign is targeting not less than 4000 pints of blood for the national blood bank.
Quoting data from the National Blood Transfusion Service, Mr. Kuzoe said about 36 percent of the national blood supply came from voluntary donations and that has not been encouraging, especially after the end of year festivities and most especially post covid-pandemic effect, which has led to a reduction in voluntary blood donations.
“By running this blood donation exercise, it is our desire to help alleviate the high numbers of maternal mortality cases since loss of blood is one of the leading causes of maternal deaths,” Mr. Kuzoe emphasized. He thereby entreated staff, stakeholder and the entire public to donate blood to help stock the blood banks in the country’s health facilities.
For his part, Area Sales manager of MTN, Northern Region, Collins Adjei, said the programme was initiated to give staff of MTN, its trade partners and the public the opportunity to show love on Valentine’s Day by donating blood to help save lives.
Among other recognition; the “save a life” project has earned MTN foundation, the Highest Corporate Blood Donor in 2013 following it up with the second highest corporate donor in 2014 and one of the highest in 2015.
Story By: Nelson Nyadror |www.diamondfmonline.com |Ghana
