The QI Group organised a Blood Donation Drive over the weekend of July 18 & 19 at Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall, Selangor, Malaysia which attracted a record turnout of 267 donors.
Themed “Save Lives – Donate Now”, the drive was organised by the QI Group’s Staff Social Responsibility (SSR) Committee that works closely with the company’s social impact initiative, RYTHM Foundation to arrange volunteering opportunities for its employees.
This blood donation drive was held in collaboration with the National Blood Centre of Malaysia.
CEO of QI’s Malaysia Operations Boey Kho said the employees have been organising blood donation drives for the last five years and each time the turnout has been encouraging.
“A single donation of blood can save three lives. It takes very little time and is a painless process. Every day, blood donors help patients of all ages have a second chance at life. Our last blood donation drive was in March, just before the lockdown. No matter how much science advances, blood which is an essential element of humans, cannot be artificially created. That’s why blood donation is very valuable, especially during this on-going pandemic,” she said.
QI Group answered the call by the National Blood Centre which urged Malaysians to donate blood as the country’s blood bank stock was down by 40 per cent due to the movement control order (MCO).
This two-day blood donation drive is also a regular community engagement activity of the QI Group in Malaysia. Last year, 1,204 QI staff in 15 countries contributed a total of 12,000 community engagement volunteering hours through 140 activities.
Meanwhile, Kalyani Puspangathan who heads the QI’s SSR committee recalled a recent incident where a QI staff reached out to her after work one day, asking if she could help a relative who needed blood.
“Her uncle needed blood of A negative group and because of our close working relationship with the National Blood Centre, we managed to get him the help within an hour. This goes on to show that we may never know who we are helping by donating blood, sometimes it can be for someone close to us, or it may even be for ourselves, one day,” she said.
She said many of the blood donors who turned out at the drive were regular donors who were not able to donate during the MCO period.
