The Department of Transfusion Medicine, PGI, celebrated National Voluntary Blood Donation Day at Bhargava Auditorium on Thursday in collaboration with the UT State AIDS Control Society.

Professor Amod Gupta, PGI Sub-Dean and Head, Advanced Eye Care Centre, was the chief guest while Professor Emeritus J G Jolly from the Department of Transfusion Medicine was the guest of honour on the occasion.

In all, 85 donor organisations associated with PGI which hold regular blood donation camps were felicitated at the function. The annual requirement of PGI is around 50,000 blood units, of which almost 40,000 are collected from voluntary blood donors.

These include educational institutions, religious organisations, blood donor councils of various towns around Chandigarh, corporate houses and many NGOs.

Also, 35 star donors were honoured at the function. These included centurion donors (more than 100 donations), plateletpheresis donors and emergency rare blood group donors.

A camp was also organised in the Blood Donation Complex at PGI, in which over 100 volunteers donated the precious drops of life.

STAR ORGANISATIONS

Sant Nirankari Mission, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Competent House, Mohali, MLN College, Yamuna Nagar, DAV College, Chandigarh, Punjab Engineering College, S D College, Ambala, Shri Sathya Sai Seva Organisation, Institute of Hotel Management and Catering, Aggarwal Sabha, State Bank of India, Canara Bank Officers Association, Thalassemia Children Welfare Association, Tribune Employees Union, The Indian Express

STAR DONORS

Arun Aggarwal (190 donations), Charanjit Singh (174), Harish Sharma (165), Rajinder Garg (144), Sat Pal Bansal (140), Praveen Moudgil (125), Capt Reet M P Singh (111), Arvinder Khanna (110), S S Setia (110), Dr Mohinder Singhal (108), Shiv Kumar Malhotra (105), Dr Usha Rao (87), Dr Arunalok Chakrabarty (80), Suresh Sharma (70), Jaswant Kaur (60).