EBA statement for World Blood Donor Day 2025

World Blood Donor Day 2025: ‘Give blood, give hope: together we save lives’

June 14^th is World Blood Donor Day. This year’s theme ‘Give blood, give hope: together we save lives’ highlights the life-changing impact blood donors have on those in need. Blood saves the lives of patients during surgical operations and of people who require regular transfusions; it saves the lives of victims of accidents and of natural disasters; it saves and improves the lives of people with cancer, immunodeficiencies, and haemoglobinopathies; it saves the lives of individuals suffering from trauma, women with peripartum haemorrhages, and premature babies.

This Saturday, together with all in our global community, we will be thanking our donors and celebrating the power of community and solidarity in saving lives through the simple act of giving blood. The European Blood Alliance (EBA), representing public and not-for-profit blood establishments in 29 countries, particularly thanks the more than 15 million donors in Europe whose voluntary unpaid blood, plasma, and platelet donations save lives and brings communities together.

Peter O’Leary, Executive Director of EBA notes:

“World Blood Donor Day is an opportunity to thank the wonderful donors and encourage everyone in our communities to donate. It is also the time to highlight the need for national health authorities and the EU to support increasing collections of blood and plasma from voluntary unpaid donors, and to provide optimal donor care and high-quality blood products in the interests of patients”

Today we depend on a pool of voluntary, unpaid donors who give blood regularly. Between 67,000 and 70,000 units of blood are needed every day in the European Union (EU) to meet the needs of patients; people in every community, in every region, in every country need blood and need hope. It may be a pregnant woman or a heart transplant recipient, a young child or an elderly neighbour. Yet, while about 1 in 4 of us will need blood, less than 1 in 20 of those eligible to donate give blood.

Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of Europeans depend on plasma medicines which can only be made from donated plasma. A reliance on plasma imports, primarily from the US, endangers patient access and thus undermines the health security of EU Member States and Europe as a whole. This is why EBA has joined patients, donors, blood establishments, physicians and other healthcare professionals, hospitals, healthcare services and public sector industry representatives in the www.CommitToPlasma.eu campaign to urge national and EU authorities to increase their political support and funding to public plasma collection programmes to facilitate the broad, active participation from the community needed to meet the ongoing need for these medicines.

EBA once again expresses its gratitude to our donors, whether blood, platelet, plasma, or all three, and acknowledges that blood establishments’ very effective contribution to patient care is down to their selfless, generous donation.