Donation of reproductive material and blood donation will be the focus of this year's round table on donation, which will be held on 23rd October, at 3:30 pm, at the concert hall of Youth Centre (Mladezhki Dom) - Varna. Organizers of the event are the Association of Medical Students in Bulgaria, I Want a Baby Foundation, Mothers for Donation Foundation, Regional Centre for Transfusion Hematology (RCTH) - Varna, organizations of patients with rare diseases.
Among the participants in the round table discussions will be Assoc. Prof. Dr. Matey Andonov, head of Embryology Laboratory at Medical Complex "Maichin Dom" - Varna, Dr. Zhanina Yordanova, head of RCTH-Varna, Stanislav Morfov.Chairman of the Association of Medical Students in Bulgaria, patients with thalassemia (a rare disease which requires blood transfusion every month), as well as representatives of Mothers for Donation Foundation and I Want a Baby Foundation.
Under this initiative, the medical students from MU-Varna will distribute information leaflets to promote donation among the population of Varna.
In Bulgaria, 145 000 people have been registered for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) procedures. More than 250 000 people have reproductive problems. Using a donor is the only chance for having a child for more than 40000 of them. The age of women needing donor eggs has fallen to 21-22 years. The great number of people in need is mainly due to exhausted ovarian reserve in women and lazy sperms in men. Unfortunately, a new tendency in that field is the increase of young people with reproductive problems, starting from their birth. Donors of reproductive material can be women between 18 - 34 years of age, who have at least one child, and men - over the age of 18. By donating reproductive material, they help other unfamiliar to them people to have children.
Blood and blood products are irreplaceable life-saving medical products, without synthetic analogues up to now. If it weren't for blood donors, hundreds of people in need of planned operations, accident victims, women in labor, chronically ill people would be doomed.
Bulgaria is among the countries with the lowest number of donors - only 22 out of 1000 people are blood donors. That ratio needs to be at least 33/1000 in order to meet the needs of the health system. The number of blood donations is particularly low in the summer months.
As a token of empathy and understanding of this problem, the students of MU-Varna, together with the Regional Centre for Transfusion Haematology, organize annual blood donation campaigns at the University.
