Few Donate Blood in Armenia

YEREVAN (A1+) — Relatives of people diagnosed with aplastic anemia have to find donors themselves. They either give blood or buy it from Armenia’s Health Ministry’s Blood Transfusion Center, named after Professor R. Yolyan. To date, none of the relatives donating blood to patients has been compensated.
A bag of blood costs 10,000 drams in Armenia. In cases of emergency a patient receives blood from the center’s reserves compiled from volunteer donors.
The state budget annually allots 135 million drams for in-patient treatment of patients with blood illnesses. According to Daghbashyan the money is spent on medicine.
To secure blood stocks, 20 of every 1,000 individuals should voluntarily donate blood while today only one or two individuals do it. Surely, there are people who demand nothing for their donations but they form 5 percent of overall donors. Almost 40 percent of donors demand compensation.
The number of individuals with blood illnesses totals 2,200 in Armenia, 480 of them are children.