The supply of blood bags in the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) will always be an important need. Moreover, according to WHO (World Health Organization), the need for blood bags supply in Indonesia has reached about 5,1 million bags per year. Whereas in fact, Indonesian Red Cross can only supply 4,2 million blood bags. This fact encourages the Student Executive Board (BEM) of Universitas Pelita Harapan to make ‘Blood Donation’ as one of its mandatory program.

This time, the first Blood Donation event for 2018-2019 academic year was held with the same theme as the previous one, ‘There’s a Hero Inside You’. This event was held on October 29-31, 2018, and has successfully gathered 478 blood bags from 684 participants who took part in the blood donation. This event was facilitated by three Indonesian Red Cross from three cities: on the first day, Indonesian Red Cross from Serang District came to help with 16 beds and 13 officers; on the second day Indonesian Red Cross from Lebak District came to help with 14 beds and 12 officers; and on the third day, the same Red Cross also came to help with 10 beds and 10 officers, aside from that, Indonesian Red Cross from Tangerang city also helped with 8 beds and 9 officers.

According to Sherika Anastasia, an Accounting students (2017) who also became the Head of Committee for this Blood Donation event, this event is not just an annual work program of the Student Executive Board, but even more than that, the Board wants to educate the students and civitas academica of UPH about the importance of blood donation.

“Aside from that, this year’s blood donation still has the same theme: ‘There’s a Hero Inside You’, because we think that this theme is still very relevant to the existing fact that 1 blood bag can actually safe three lives. Moreover, knowing that the need for blood bags in Indonesia is an urgent one, we see the theme as a fit. Why? Because blood can only be produced by the human body, not artificially nor chemically. Thus the ones who can solve this problem and need is only us, as humans. When someone donated their blood, they have become a hero for someone who needed that blood. This is the message that we always want to share,” Sherika explained.
In this Blood Donation event, aside from the main event, the donator can also get a free medical check-up which consisted of blood sugar, cholesterol and gout checking.

Sherika also added, with this Blood Donation event, hopefully students and the civitas academica of UPH can be more aware about the lack of blood bags in Indonesia. Moreover, through this movement, BEM UPH also wants to contribute in reducing the gap between the number of available blood bags, with the need of blood bags in a number of regions in Indonesia. Later on, Blood Donation II for the 2018/2019 academic year will be held again in March 4-7, 2019.