FOR many people, blood donation offers many health benefits with few risks involved, while donated blood can save the lives of people in need.

Lineo Hilda Majara from the recruitment office of the Lesotho Blood Transfusion service (LBTS), says donating blood keeps a donor 40 percent safe from the risk of high and low blood, adding that regular blood donation is linked to lower blood pressure and lower risk of heart attacks.

She said regular donors are likely to survive accidents because their bodies are used to losing blood and recovering from the loss.

BAM group partnered with LBTS with the aim of providing the hospitals with safe and adequate blood supply and blood products to save a patient whose life is in the shadow of death.

In an interview, the Manager of Bam Group Foundation, Reitumetsi Phooko said their campaign is meant to remind Basotho about the importance of donating blood.

She said they target all age groups because they believe that a pint of blood can really save a life.

Ms Phooko she said they are also planning to hold campaigns once a month to donate blood to those who really need help.

She noted that there is a huge challenge of people who do not understand what blood donation is all about and what it takes to donate, adding that there is a need to educate people on the importance of the exercise.  

“This is a need to ensure that it gets easier for them to come forward and donate blood, because it actually takes a lot of convincing to encourage people to donate,” she said.

People who urgently need blood, said include those who were involved in accidents, such as car crashes, assaults and women with complications of child birth as well as emergency surgical operations.

At one of the blood donation campaigns held in Maseru recently, a first-time donor, Mojabeng Sonopo said she was never keen in donating blood before, because she did not understand what it entailed.

“But from a recent experience of being at a hospital and seeing patients desperately in need of blood and having to wait for weeks before getting help made me think otherwise.