38-year-old Delhi-based Social Worker Kiran Verma who completed a 21,000 Km walk across various states of the nation and reached Imphal today.
He started his walk to create blood awareness among the people of the country from Thiruvananthapuram of Kerala on December 28, 2021.
“The mission for the walk is to spread awareness about blood donation among people so that – Nobody should die waiting for blood in India after 31st December 2025”, Verma told reporters at Manipur Press Club today. He said that his mission for the longest walk is to encourage around 5 million new blood donors to donate blood so that blood banks and hospitals don’t run dry of blood.
After Imphal Verma is planning to reach Mizoram, Tripura, and other parts of North East India.
Story behind the cause: Kiran Verma started Simply Blood when his blood was sold to a poor family (from Raipur, Chhattisgarh) in Delhi who went into prostitution to pay medical bills for her husband’s treatment.
On 26 Dec 2016, he got a call where a person who told Kiran that there was a poor family from Raipur; Chhattisgarh who needed blood and Kiran went to the hospital to donate blood to that family.
After donating blood he went to meet the family and got to know that the person who called Kiran took Rs. 1500 for the blood, he donated for free. He got to know that the lady who paid for his blood got into prostitution to pay medical bills.
It was hard to digest for him and on the same day he left his job and took this as his goal “Nobody should die because of lack of blood by 2025 in India”.
“Everyday more than 12,000 people fail to get blood in India, due to which more than 3 million people die waiting for blood. If 5 million youth start donating blood, then there will be not even a single death due to non-availability of blood in India”, Verma said adding that recently every person must have gone through a Plasma Crisis during the second wave of COVID. Also there is a huge blood shortage in blood banks across India as people are scared of donating blood at hospitals. It all happened, as we don’t have a culture of donating blood in India.
Kiran Verma is also the founder of “Change With One Foundation” under which he runs two programs Simply Blood and Change With One Meal.
In 2018, Kiran Verma also traveled 16,000 km across India covering more than 6,000 km on foot only for the same cause.
Man walking 21,000 kms for blood awareness reaches Imphal
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