Lê Xuân Sơn, editor-in-Chief of Tiền Phong newspaper and head of the organising committee, speaks at a press conference on Monday. — Photo tienphong.vn

HÀ NỘI — The main festival of the 15th Chủ Nhật Đỏ (Red Sunday) 2023 blood donation campaign will officially take place at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology in Hà Nội on December 18 in an effort to overcome the blood shortage situation in hospitals during the upcoming Tết (Lunar new year) holidays.

The annual event will be organised by Tiền Phong (Vanguard) newspaper, the National Steering Committee on Traffic Safety, and the National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusions (NIHBT) in more than 40 provinces and cities across the country.

Lê Xuân Sơn, editor-in-Chief of Tiền Phong newspaper and head of the organising committee, said that the organising committee expects to collect 45,000 - 50,000 blood units during four months, from November 2022 to February 2023.

“This year's Red Sunday blood donation campaign will focus on solving blood shortages at hospitals during the Lunar New Year holidays,” Sơn said at a press conference on Monday.

Sơn added that from November 2022 until now, the campaign has been organised in six provinces and cities with nine blood donation events receiving nearly 5,000 blood units. 

The youth donate blood at an event of the 15th Red Sunday 2023 in Đà Nẵng City on December 11. — Photo tienphong.vn

Associate Professor Nguyễn Hà Thanh, Director of the National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion (NIHBT), said that the blood collected from the Red Sunday series of voluntary blood donation festivals had helped the health sector reduce the health sector’s blood shortage risk and helped patients who needed blood to save their lives.

"This year, in the context of the dengue fever epidemic still being very complicated with many serious cases, the Red Sunday Organising Committee calls on those who are healthy enough to actively participate in platelet donation according to the needs of the donors and medical facilities,” said Thanh.

Last year, due to the pandemic, many blood donation events were cancelled, and the 14th Red Sunday festival has mobilised more than 50,000 units of blood in 43 provinces and cities, compared to 96 units of blood collected at the first Red Sunday in 2009. — VNS