DELHI: Kiran Verma, started his 21,000 kms walk for blood awareness in India from Thiruvananthapuram on 28 th Dec 2021.
This walk is currently the “longest blood awareness campaign ever by an individual in the world” which will go for 2 more years.
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 31 st December 2025”.
Due to COVID voluntary blood donation in India has gone significantly down since the last 3 years. This walk is to encourage around 5 million new blood donors to donate blood, so that blood banks and hospitals don't run dry on blood.
Till now he has walked more than 13,400 kms on foot across 176 districts, across 12 states and UTs in 18 months. (including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka,Goa, Maharashtra, Dadar Nagar and Daman and Diu, Gujarat, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal).
On 9 th April 2023, Kiran Verma was also invited on the Kapil Sharma Show.
To support his walk 107-blood donation camps has been organized in different part of the country through which more than 22,640 units of blood has been collected.
Apart from the camps more than 7000 individual blood donors have donated blood in their personal capacity at different blood banks across India and abroad to support this campaign.
On 15 th September 2022, Kiran Verma inaugurated a blood bank in Hyderabad on the name of PV Narasimha Rao’s name built by their family members.
Also a 3.5 kms Marathon was also organized in Varanasi where more than 100 people participated.
He is currently walking between Malda and Silliguri, his next destination after West Bengal will be 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 going into prostitution to pay medical bills for her husband’s treatment.
On 26 Dec 2016, he got a call where one person told Kiran that there is a poor family from Raipur; Chhattisgarh who needs 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 the same day he left his job and took this as his goal that 'nobody should die because of lack of blood by 2025 in India'.
Background:
Everyday more than 12,000 people fail to get blood in India, due to which more than 3 million people died 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.
Recently every person must have gone through 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.
To reach that goal, we have to engage people and our community, which can make our dream possible. This walk is only to make it happen.
About Us:
Kiran Verma is a Delhi based social worker that founded “Change With One Foundation” under which he runs two programs Simply Blood and Change With One Meal.
In 2018, Kiran Verma traveled 16,000 kms across India covering more than 6,000 kms on foot only for the same cause.
Simply Blood – This is the world’s first virtual blood donation platform, connecting blood donors and seekers real time (just like Uber) without charging anything to anyone. It was launched on 29 th January 2017 and till date saved more than 35,000 potential lives through blood donation.
Change With One Meal – This is an initiative where we serve unlimited meals for Rs.10 in Delhi. Till date we have served more than 4,00,000 meals in the last one year.
Contact: Kiran Verma
Founder, Simply Blood
Mobile: 9810670347..