“We’re starting another summer tour next week. Our first stop will be Milky Way. Then we will go to the village “Ano Agoriani”and we will visit the village seven hills but also her Saint EuphemiaDimitris Constantinou, who has nothing to do with singing or acting, says “K”.

The reason for the tour is different· informing citizens about blood donation and removing prejudice, fear and ignorance around it. According to Mr. Constantinou, President of the Blood Donation Volunteer Association “Amphissa” “Holy Anargyri” over the past ten years, this action in the villages of Fokida has been gaining more and more resonance every year.

The tremendous efforts made by both the Amfissa General Hospital and the City Volunteer Association to ensure that all residents become regular blood donors are also confirmed by the latest statistics from the National Blood Donation Center, which has collected and processed all data from the blood service. Donation service of the country’s hospitals.

The first blood donation study, six years later, shows that Amfissa Multidisciplinary Hospital is the #1 hospital with the best blood collection from voluntary donors.

However, this “first” is the result of systematic thirty whole years of effort, as volunteers and doctors in Amfissa tell us.

Small club, big heart

“Here, at the Amphissa Saints Anargyrs Association of Voluntary Blood Donors, we have a motto. We are a small club but with a big heart“, says Mr. Constantinou, pointing out that his goal from the very beginning as president was to create a community of active volunteers.

“At the moment, we have 300 active members in the Association, who are also regular blood donors. In addition, they themselves actively participate in the campaigns that we carry out in the schools of the city and in the surrounding villages,” says Mr. Constantinou, who donated blood about 80 times in his life.

According to him, the Association is united as one fist and reacts to every incident, be it a single event or a national tragedy.

“As soon as we learned that blood was urgently needed for the victims of the Tempi accident, we immediately responded. We have contacted the directors of general education and technical high schools in the area and during the day we managed to get blood from about 60 students of the 3rd lyceum”– says Mr. Constantinou.

Blood donor clubs are life clubs.

However, as he points out Head of the Blood Donation Department of the Amfissa General Hospital Margarita Kuladuruthe great awareness of the townspeople comes from the mobilization of not one, but all the clubs of Phocis.

“Blood donor clubs are now life clubs in Amfissa. For this reason, relationships have now developed that go beyond the need and reach friendship. After all, all clubs are constantly turning to GN Amfiss to cooperate in some new action, ”he says in K. Ms. Culadoru, adding that every year the hospital collects 2,000 bottles of blood.

She notes that she was impressed from the first moment by the way all the clubs in the area were organized, as in addition to the regular blood draws, officials made sure to organize promotions both on weekends and on weekdays to ensure that all citizens willing to do so will become volunteers.

“Regular blood donors in the area are literally lending a helping hand to keep someone alive because, when you think about it, we are all bleeding from our own hands. On our part, the goal is never to miss a bottle of blood from someone who needs it. We really want to help because we don’t hire health, we serve it every day,” concludes Ms. Kuladuru.

Shared Vision

With his hand, Doctor, Head of Blood Donation Department GN Amfissa, Dimitris Burganosemphasizes that the response of citizens to voluntary blood donation stems from the shared vision of all involved carriers.

"All have the same goal· relieving the unknown guy's pain and his anxiety to find blood. The staff of the Hospital Blood Donation Service are cultivating volunteerism, which, like a seed, in the yeast of older blood donors and active associations, bears fruit,” says Mr. Burganos.

"Take what little is left and give it to someone who needs it"

According to the doctor, the readiness of residents to donate blood is obvious, and this is the main reason why they do not give up their efforts.

“We will find strength in the difficult times we are going through, from our own people. When I told an elderly regular blood donor a few days ago that her hematocrit was at the border for donating blood, she replied: “It doesn’t matter, this is not much left, take it and give it to whoever needs it, it belongs to him, not to me.”

Graphics: Pavlos Methodius / Kathimerini