The Give Life Campaign is designed to urge the Black community community to donate blood to help save the lives of innocent Black youths who have fallen victim to knife crime, and also help fight other problems such as sickle cell that many black youths suffer from.

So many innocent young people experience the awful trauma associated with knife crime, many families have wept because their children have died, simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. When a young person is stabbed they could suffer a significant loss of blood before they reach hospital. Five minutes of heavy bleeding from a knife wound can lead to loss of consciousness or even death, even though the NHS target for ambulances responding to life-threatening (category 1) calls is seven minutes, there are still major problems for blood transfusions. Major haemorrhage is one of the most common causes of death in trauma patients and for Black youth the odds are stacked against them.

Stabbings require immediate medical attention to stop bleeding and repair the body but problems like organ damage or infection can mean recovery takes much longer. Some victims spend months in hospital recovering, blood transplant supplies are low.

URGENCY

Increasing the number of black people who donate blood is an urgent priority for NHS Blood and Transplant.

Black donors are ten times more likely to have the Ro and B positive blood types urgently needed to treat the 15,000 people in the UK suffering from sickle cell disease and knife & gun crime victims. Sickle cell is a painful and debilitating condition which is particularly prevalent in people with an African or Caribbean background.

To get the best treatment, patients need blood which is closely matched to their own. This is most likely to come from a donor of the same ethnicity. Yet only 1% of current blood donors are black – that’s 11,400 people.

OUR AIMS

The overall aims of our program is to:

• bring the various black communities together to understand who needs blood and why

• understand why giving blood from black people is important

• dispel myths and fears of giving blood

• how to register to give blood

• provide opportunities to highlight and promote stories and testimonials

Contact Us and get involved

If you would like to get involved in this campaign please email us at givelife@thesafetybox.org get in contact you could end up saving someone’s life.

Call us on: 0843 289 6761