On Thursday, June 11, the Slovak Red Cross, the Košice Territorial Association, awarded 77 blood donors for their voluntary humane act and selfless help in saving human lives.
The Professor Janský Diamond Plaque is awarded by the Red Cross for 60 donations for women and 80 donations for men. It was received by Michal Džupin, Radoslav Vrana and Peter Spišák. Michal Džupin works as a gas station engineer at DZ Energetika - vodohospodárstvo and since the number of samples is approaching a hundred meters, he is very close to being awarded the Kňazovický medal. He has donated blood 98 times. Radoslav Vrana works as a train driver in DZ Doprava and his colleagues from work are also donors. He has already had 83 free blood donations, as well as Peter Spišák. Peter was brought to donation by his colleagues from work. His brother, mother and several friends also donate blood.
Four other colleagues received the Kňazovický medal for 100 free blood donations.
Gabriel Bráz has been donating blood regularly for 25 years, and his colleagues from DZ Zľachťovňa and the packaging branch are also regular donors. Július Goleňa is from the same divisional plant. He started donating blood at the age of 20 and has donated it 103 times so far. The same number of samples has been taken by Marcel Jaroš, who works as a train driver at DZ Doprava. Erik Tomek from the OHS department was brought to donate blood by his classmates at the Secondary Industrial School of Metallurgy. Although he has already exceeded a hundred donations, he wants to continue donating. He planned to donate the next day after the award ceremony.
At the end, the head of the National Transfusion Service (NTS) from the Košice workplace, Jitka Mačalová, also addressed the donors:
"First of all, I would like to congratulate you warmly and secondly, thank you very much for coming to the transfusion workplace, and it does not matter whether you come to the hematology and transfusion department in Šac or in another city, or to the workplaces of the National Transfusion Service of the Slovak Republic. Thank you, because we are the ones who take care of your donation, your blood, so that it comes at the right time in the right processing to the patient who needs it. Blood donors are the elite of society for me."
At the same time, she called on donors to come and donate blood in the summer if they can. The National Transfusion Station is already recording a decline in supplies of some blood types. Regular donors are away in the summer, which naturally reduces their availability. In addition, after returning from some foreign countries, there is a temporary stop for blood donation.
In the cover photo from left to right: Július Goleňa, Slavomír Geffert, Erik Tomko, Michal Džupin, Radoslav Vrana, Gabriel Bráz and Marcel Jaroš
