By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Jun 17 2003 (IPS)

Unseen for a decade, a brightly coloured coach is back on the roads of Serbia. ‘Give Blood, Save Lives’, goes the slogan painted on its sides.

The coach carries doctors and medical staff from the Belgrade Institute for Blood Transfusion. They plan to visit the 20 biggest towns over June and July to encourage the practice of blood donation. Like so much else, this too had declined during the rule of former president Slobodan Milosevic in the 90s.

Over this period, Serbia fell to the bottom of the list of blood donation in Europe. "Our statistics show that less than three percent of the 7.5 million people in Serbia are blood donors," Jelica Milenkovic from the Serbian Red Cross Society told IPS. "In other European countries, it is between five and eight percent."

The coach is a part of a new drive to change all that. "To give blood means to show solidarity and a humane attitude," assistant health minister Ivan Jovanovic said in Belgrade last week as the coach set off on its mission. "We want to develop the awareness that one can expect help only if one helps other people."

The Health Ministry made its moves only after blood reserves in Serbian hospitals reached a critical low last month. The first anyone heard of this was when authorities at a hospital in Uzice, 180 kilometres south of Belgrade announced that the hospital may have to close down for lack of blood.

"We sounded the alarm bell because at one point last month we had 20 patients, including a newborn baby, in need of blood transfusions," Dr Radmila Smiljanic, head of the hospital declared. "We did not have a single unit of blood. We wanted to draw the attention of people to this problem."

Health workers are reluctant to speak about methods used to deal with such crises in the past. A fairly simple way was found of solving the problem. If a patient needed blood for surgery, family members were called in as donors. Where blood types matched, the solution was quick. Where they did not, a swap was arranged, even if it took some time.

A relative would donate blood that would be sent to one of three transfusion centres in Belgrade, Novi Sad or Nis. The centre would issue an exchange unit with the blood type needed for the operation. This method worked for more than a decade.

But Red Cross and Health Ministry officials say Serbia must change a situation where doctors have to go seeking blood, and relatives are forced to donate it. "Blood units must be prepared in advance and be there waiting for the patient, it can never again be the other way round," says Dr Gradimir Bogdanovic, head of the Belgrade Institute for Blood Transfusion.

"Donating blood is a cultural phenomenon, it shows the level of general education among people," Dr Bogdanovic told IPS. "Most blood is donated in (the developed, northern province of) Vojvodina and Belgrade itself, while in southern areas less than one percent of people are willing to donate blood."

According to the Belgrade Institute for Blood Transfusion, Serbia needs a reserve of 1,000 units of blood a day. Half of these are needed for hospitals in Belgrade, where almost half of daily surgeries in Serbia are performed.

The new campaign has been launched with a budget of 370,000 dollars. "We’ll start an education campaign in provincial Serbia, give away T-shirts and hats with the inscription ‘I Donate Blood’ to those who join," Bogdanovic says. Messages are being aired on major radio and television stations.

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