Kathmandu, June 12:

Health experts today said that college-level students should participate in blood donation to cope with the scarcity of blood.

Speaking at an interaction organised by Prime College to mark World Blood Donors Day, health specialists said that blood scarcity could be highly reduced by motivating the youths for donating the blood.

The Club-25 is a group of college students who formed the group to help solve the problem of blood scarcity in the country.

Mahendra Bilash Joshi, president of the Blood Donors’ Association of Nepal (BLODAN), said Club-25 would increase the number of blood donors from 0.4 per cent to around 2 per cent.

“Our programmes aim at convincing youths to donate blood because they are comparatively healthier than people of other ages and they do have high risk bearing capacity. Moreover, they can continue donating blood for a longer duration,” Joshi said.

After being member of Club-25, the students form respective colleges can themselves organise the blood donation programme.

He said that the involvement of students in blood donation would be helpful to control blood contamination through the use of drugs.

Dr Manita Rajkarnikar, director of Centre for Blood Transfusion Service under the Nepal Red Cross Society, said that students’ participation in the regular blood donation programmes would help reduce blood crisis because they can easily and regularly donate blood.

She said, “Presently, only people between the age of 20 to 40 years are donating blood and now onwards, even 18 years old students can give blood through Club-25, which would definitely increase the blood supply.”

Naresh Das Shrestha, principal of the Prime College said Club-25 would be a good platform for the students to serve their society by donating blood and helping save lives. “Coordination between students and colleges would help carry out social responsibility,” Shrestha added.