Harare,  (New Ziana)-The National Blood Services of Zimbabwe (NBSZ) on Monday said it is expecting to collect 97 500 units of blood this year due to increased awareness and successful campaigns.

Addressing the media ahead of the June 14 World Blood Donor Day commemorations, NBSZ chief executive officer Lucy Marowa urged more citizens to donate blood. “And in terms of just to give you a snippet of how successful the blood donation program has been, this year we are targeting to collect 97 500 units of blood.

“So, so far, just for the first half of this year, we have actually achieved about 73 percent of the target. We are on 73 percent of the target, so we are well on track,” she said. Last year, NBSZ managed to collect 82 percent of the targeted volume of blood.

“It’s actually a scale up from last year’s target where we wanted to collect 88 450. From that target of last year, we managed to collect 82 percent of that target, which was 77 020 units. But we are saying that despite only getting to 88 percent of our target last year due to some operational challenge, we have managed to do our best to address those operational challenges and scale up to a target of 97 500 units,” said Marowa.

Turning to the World Blood Donor Day, Marowa said it would be a time to encourage blood donation.

“We are hoping that this will inspire both the school-going donors and the adults from that community to become regular blood donors,” she said, adding although Harare province is hosting the commemorations this year, the function has been set for Kadoma on June 11.

The commemorations are running under the theme; “Give Blood, Give Hope, Together We Save Lives.”

New Ziana