In my days at Medical College, i saw that availability of
blood was one of the most challenging issues. Patients sometimes had to travel
hundreds of kilometres to arrive at the hospital for a surgery. To ensure
availability of blood, the blood bank wanted the bystanders of patients to predonate
blood. It was heart breaking to see that many surgeries had to be postponed due
to lack of donors. I was part of a team which strived to solve this. Our small initiative
of creating a blood donor’s forum at district level could bring relief to many
needy people. Today when i read about socialblood I felt moved. This innovative
web platform by Karthik Naralasetty is likely to create blood donor’s forum
with global reach. It is going to begin a new phase in history of blood
donation.
The story of social blood began when its founder, KarthikNaralasetty , read about the need of a child who wanted many transfusions in a
year to fight her thalasemmia. Karthik harnessed the power of social media to
find help for the needy. He created groups in facebook for each blood group,
and then created a platform Socialblood.org to compile all these data. Those
people who needed help could post the info which helped to connect to donors. Even
perfect strangers from distant regions came to help the people who were in need
for blood. He has combined the passion for social networking with the compassion to donate blood.
Over time socialblood.org has improved. The hurdles in blood
donation like geo-location etc have been slowly solved by collecting additional
information. A link of donors with the nearest blood bank can also be established.
This slow movement is gradually becoming
a revolution. The social blood has seen participation of people from all
over the world. The thunderous applause at the TEDx stands testimony to the effect it has on
improving life of common man. He was awarded Staples youth social entrepreneur
award for his creation socialblood.org
Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012. It brought many innovators to the fora. The pratham initiative by Roshini Nilekhani was another moving innovative story.
You can watch these inspiring videos @ ftideacaravan
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