Voluntary blood donation in Tripura has become a movement of sorts with people from all streams of life coming forward for this noble cause.

According to the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), Tripura is ranked third in the country after West Bengal and Maharastra in voluntary blood donation (VBD).

A few months ago former separatist leader Ananta Debbarma organised a VBD camp in which not only male militant leaders and cadres but even their wives participated.

“Sometime we have shed blood for no cause but now we are trying to wash away our sins by donating blood to save lives. At present we are unable to give anything to people, but we do have hearts. That is why we are donating blood,” said Debbarma.
Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar is leading from the front to popularise the concept of VBD - he has donated blood four times after becoming Chief Minister in 1998.
“All my party workers, along with various club members, students, youths and social workers across the state have been asked to donate blood and to encourage everybody to donate blood voluntarily to save the lives of the ailing,” Sarkar said.
But all this has not happened in a day. In Tripura there was a prevailing stigma against donating blood as most  people believe that donating blood is a dangerous and harmful practice.
Credit goes to one man who had moved from place to place, house to house to popularize the concept of ‘Donate Blood to Save Life’. And he is none other than Nibir Sen, at present a headmaster in a higher secondary school who with the help of some of his close friends and the Ramakrishna Mission had first brought the practice of conducting blood donation camps.
Sen had formed the Society of Voluntary Blood Donation (SVBD), an NGO, which is leading the campaign in Tripura.
“Eight years ago, only 22 percent of the total required blood had been collected through VBD, now the percentage is 83.2 percent,” said Nibir Sen, secretary of the NGO.
Every club, office, educational institutions, NGO and locality is  conducting blood donation camps and sometime the authorities have to refuse to accept blood donations due to scarcity of storing facilities.
Today with the hardship of SVBD in Tripura blood donation has become so popular that there are several people who are even donating blood on the birthday of their near and dear ones.
Sen was adjudged as ‘Man of the Year’ in 2007 by The Times of India for his active involvement in VBD. He has donated blood on 19 occasions so far.
Sen said those men who had donated blood 20 times and women who had donated 10 times were being felicitated. The function is being organised as part of World Blood Donor Day, declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2004 to commemorate the birthday of Karl Landsteiner, the Nobel prize winner, who discovered the A,B,O blood group system in 1901.

Chandana Bhowmik