Health Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy is calling on members of the public to help the Blood Bank to reach its 6,000 units of blood target for this year.

During a press conference last week Dr Ramsammy said that the target must be met within the next three weeks.

And he has set as a challenge a total of 800 units of blood to be collected for December. While this has never been done before and it is not their goal, the minister said the focus is to ensure that blood is readily available for anyone throughout this holiday season.

Ramsammy pointed out that to date they have managed to accumulate 5,200 cleared units of blood. Out of the amount accumulated just over 2,300 units were from voluntary donors. This covered a record 45% of the amount collected to date, the minister reported.

He also disclosed that in June this year the highest amount of blood was collected while November recorded the second highest. In June the blood bank collected 555 units of blood while in November they collected 551 units.

Ramsammy said these figures show that the challenge of collecting 800 units of blood for December can be met. He added that with the Christmas season here there needs to be a safe amount of blood in storage.

“Over the next three weeks we have to ensure that we collect enough blood which will ensure that the health systems have enough blood in supply to cater for the holiday period where people are not likely to come out and donate blood,” the minister said.

In responding to a question about the challenges which the blood bank faces in carrying out blood drives, the minister pointed to the storage capacity for blood nationwide.

“As you know the blood bank is a very specialized service, the laboratory, the storage of blood and so on