There is one medicine that no factory in the world can manufacture. It is not synthesised in a laboratory, not imported, not bought. Its only source is the human being. And the only way it comes into existence is when someone, at some moment, decides to give it.

Who can give blood

The most widespread misconception is that blood is given by “the donors” — a separate category of people, somebody else. That is not true.

Blood is given by every healthy person. Our fellow citizens. Ourselves. Men and women, ordinary villagers and village dignitaries alike. There are no distinctions and no exceptions: one need only be healthy and within the age limits set by the blood donation service.

You don’t have to be a hero. Being healthy is enough.

Why the need never stops

Blood cannot be stored indefinitely. It has a limited shelf life — only a few weeks for red blood cells, and less still for platelets. This means that every unit donated today does not cover tomorrow. The need is not seasonal; it is constant and recurring.

Blood is needed by the victims of road and workplace accidents. By patients undergoing surgery. By women facing a difficult childbirth. By cancer patients during their treatment. And, with particular urgency in our country, by people living with thalassaemia (Mediterranean anaemia), who require regular transfusions for life.

The social dimension: why we call it civilisation

Voluntary blood donation is one of the few acts of solidarity that remain entirely anonymous. The donor does not know whom they are helping. The patient never learns who helped them. There is no thank you, no return, no recognition. There is only the act.

That is precisely why blood donation serves as a measure of a society’s maturity. It shows whether the people of a community are willing to give something of themselves to someone they will never meet.

For a village, however, there is also a far more practical dimension. When the unexpected happens — an accident, an emergency operation, a complication — the family suddenly has to find blood within hours, at a moment when they have no strength even to think. An organised blood bank means that this search does not have to happen at all. The blood is already there. It was given in advance, by the neighbours, for someone they did not yet know would need it.

In our village, no one faces need alone.

The history of our group

The Cultural Association “Chatzigiorgis”, attentive to the health needs of the village, addressed the gaps in medical care from its very first year. It equipped the rural medical centre with oxygen, a steriliser, an incubator and an ECG machine, and at the same time founded a blood collection group, providing blood free of charge to those residents who needed it.

In the late 1990s the group became inactive, owing to the difficulties of maintaining the blood bank. It was re-established in 2002 and became active immediately: only three years later, in 2005, the Association was awarded by the General Hospital of Kavala as the best blood bank in the prefecture, both for its collection and for its maintenance.

The blood bank withstood even the two-year quarantine of 2007–2008, when brucellosis (Malta fever) appeared in Theologos. And in 2010, across the two donation periods of spring and autumn, it set a record in donations and units collected, making up for the lost years.

Since then, blood collections have continued steadily, twice a year. Today the Association’s blood bank holds a reserve of more than 250 units — a safety net built one unit at a time, by people of the village, for people of the village.

Our slogans

“Chatzigiorgis” Cultural Association — Blood Donation Department