THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In an age when people are still apprehensive about donating blood, Keerthana Mannayam and her friends are special. More than 120 people signed up to donate blood at an awareness campaign spearheaded by the girls, all of them students of Cotton Hill Girls’ Higher Secondary School. A jostling crowd was seen in the school on Friday to donate blood in the blood donation camp organised by the school’s PTA. The plus-two students in the school have removed the fear of people by conducting awareness campaigns on blood donation. The constant effort by Keerthana for creating awareness made her the winner of ‘Buddy for life,’ a competition organised by the medical equipment firm Terumo Penpol. ‘’From my childhood days, I was very interested in social service. We are conducting the voluntary blood donation campaign for the second time,” says Keerthana. Her classmates and NSS volunteers helped her organise awareness campaigns. She invited blood donation motivators to the campaigns to make teachers and students realise the importance of blood donation. The students distributed posters and brochures describing the need for voluntary blood donation among the people in the city. “Students went to restaurants, government and private offices to create awareness. Last year, 28 people had donated blood in the camp conducted as part of the blood donation day. This year, 49 people donated. Although more than 120 people registered, we had to avoid a few due to their health condition,” says Mini S, principal of Cotton Hill Higher Secondary School. The students too were willing to donate blood. However, only a person above 18 years of age can turn a donor. Most of the students brought their parents and relatives and teachers themselves queued up to donate blood. “I was not aware about the procedures for voluntarily donating blood. But when Keethana told me about the procedure and about the blood donation campaign they were conducting, I decided to do it as a social service,” says Santhosh K, a businessman at Puliyarakonam. Even though Keerthana too wants to donate her blood, she cannot do it as she is underweight at just 40 kg. The minimum weight needed for a donor is 45 kg. “It is the first time that we are collecting blood from a donation campaign organised by school children. We were astonished to find so many people queuing up,’’ says Jaisy Mathew, Professor, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology.
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