HSE Students and Staff Donate 87.3 Litres of Blood

On January 25^th and 26^th, the traditional Donor Day took place at HSE. The building on Shabolovka welcomed donors from all over the university, and over the two days, nearly 200 students and staff members donated their blood. This is 40 more donations than last year.

Aiming to popularize blood donation at the university, the project offers a special system of rewards for ‘honorary donors of the Armenian Club’. Participants who have donated three or more times receive a T-shirt from the organizers.

The project team is planning to conduct lectures on blood donation, thus hoping to decrease the number of rejections given to potential donors. Rejections may be made for various reasons, says Sofia Engurazova, student of the Faculty of Law, who managed to donate her blood only from the fourth attempt.

‘I remember well how I prepared for each of the failed attempts. I strictly followed the donor’s diet, then stood on the scales in the morning of the donation day and saw a figure fluctuating between 49 and 50. I stuffed my pockets with all the random things, but the doctor’s scales consistently showed ‘underweight’, and I was denied the opportunity to donate due to several hundred grams. This time, everything was different! I’m that rare girl who is happy to have a couple of added kilos! It seems like all I needed to be happy was to have someone take several hundred millilitres of blood from me. For the whole day, I was incredibly energetic, and I don’t understand whether it was the procedure itself or the dream that came true. Now, I’ll wait for three months to pass and will be sure to come again’, Sofia said.

The HSE Donor Day is a project organized jointly by the Armenian Club and the Moscow Department of Health Blood Transfusion Centre twice each year. The next event will be held in May. Updated information is published on the HSE Donor Day website (in Russian).