‘Open your Heart, Donate Blood’ Campaign Aims to Recruit and Engage Young Donors in Andalusia

The counselor of Health and Consumption of the Andalusian Government, Catalina García, has presented in Seville, together with the director of the Andalusian Network of Transfusion Medicine, Tissues and Cells, Salvador Oyonarte, the campaign‘Open your heart, donate blood’which aims to appeal to young people between 18 and 30 years old to make a firm and sustained commitment, becoming permanent donors and in digital activists of this solidarity cause. The event was also attended by Enrique Sánchez, chef and presenter of Canal Sur, and Virgilio Hidalgo, tiktoker, both participants in the campaign.

During the presentation, García pointed out that Andalusia will need at least 104,000 new blood donors in the next 25 years. This figure corresponds to 57% of current donors, and is the number of people who will have to stop donating when they reach the maximum age of 65 years. Hence, the recruitment of new donors, and especially young people under 30 years of age, and their loyalty as recurring donors is one of the main strategic objectives of the Andalusian Network of Transfusion Medicine, Tissues and Cells, RAMTTC, a structure dependent on the Andalusian Service. of Health, and in charge of obtaining, processing and supplying units of blood and blood derivatives to cover the transfusion needs of Andalusian hospitals.

To move in this direction, the Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs has launched this social media campaign which aims to recruiting donors between 18 and 30 years old and their involvement as “digital activists” that recommend blood donation and help create culture and social awareness among young people about the importance of donating four times a year if they are men, and three times a year if they are women. “Every time we donate blood, we save the lives of three people,” she added.

This campaign has had the voluntary collaboration of Andalusian celebrities and influencers with thousands of followers on social networks, to which thousands of anonymous donors are expected to join. In the coming weeks, these celebrities will star in and share a video on their personal profiles appealing to blood donation with the same final message, ‘Open your heart, donate blood’, accompanying these words with the simple gesture of opening a drop of blood. blood, invert it and unfold it until it becomes a heart.

Among the well-known faces who will lend their altruistic collaboration are the chef and presenter Enrique Sánchez, the comedian Luis Lara, the actor Juan Amodeo, the writer and journalist Julio Muñoz Gijón, the footballer Jesús Navas, the journalist and presenter Roberto Leal, and the young content creators and digital influencers Juan Carlos Miranda and Virgilio Hidalgo, among others. Likewise, the Minister of Health and Consumer Affairs will also join in, as well as Andalusian mayors and other authorities who will participate with videos in the campaign.

The videos will be disseminated by the eight transfusion centers that make up the RAMTTC, which will also be responsible for distributing heart shaped drop down blood drops among the donors participating in the next collections, and especially among young people, so that they also record their own video and can share it on social networks, making the call to donate blood acquire the greatest dissemination and viralization possible .

Blood donation during the Christmas holidays

“With the exemplarity, prescription and creation of young people, we want to turn donation into an unstoppable social wave, which guarantees coverage of the greatest needs that we will have in the coming years,” he explained, while recalling that the Christmas parties are “dates when the number of donations usually falls, but blood needs remain the same, since the healthcare activity does not rest”, which is why it has been decided to launch the campaign in the weeks prior to the Immaculate Bridge. “We also want it to serve as a reminder and call to the population to celebrate Christmas with a genuine act of solidarity and love, such as donating blood,” he added.

The director of the RAMTTC, for his part, has insisted that “blood is the only medicine that cannot be manufactured” and that “it is essential for the normal functioning of the Andalusian public health system.” In this sense, he has also stressed the fact that The aging of the population will not only mean the retirement of many donors, but blood needs will also increase.

«In ten years, the population over 65 will grow by 30%, and this population will predictably increase the demand for blood. Conversely, the population under 30 years of age will decrease by 14%, so greater awareness and social activism around donation is necessary than ever before,” he stated. Finally, he has described as “crucial and strategic” the challenge of turning blood donation into an attractive social cause for young Andalusians.