Blood Donation as a Form of Modern Mutual Cooperation
Just before midnight, the phone rang at the home of a civil servant (ASN) official in North Jakarta. One of his staff members was scheduled for surgery the next day and needed blood. The following morning, the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) office was filled with tired but determined faces. Colleagues came in turn, a sub-district head was also present, all for one purpose: to save a life. Such incidents are not unusual. Almost every day, PMI receives requests for blood from families of patients struggling to stay alive. This story reminds us of one important thing: behind every available blood bag, there is always a voluntary act by someone willing to help another person.
Interestingly, donors often do not know the recipients of their blood. Once donated, the blood is not immediately given to a specific patient. It undergoes a process of screening, filtering, and separation into various components, which are then distributed according to patient needs. Thus, blood donation is not merely a relationship between two people, the donor and the recipient. It is a humanitarian chain that brings together people who do not know each other in a mutual cooperation (gotong royong) to save lives. The momentum of World Blood Donor Day, commemorated every 14 June, serves as an important reminder of the meaning of such solidarity. In hospitals across the country, blood is needed daily for traffic accident victims, cancer patients, thalassemia sufferers, kidney failure patients, and mothers experiencing complications during childbirth.
The problem of blood in Indonesia remains a major challenge. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates the ideal blood requirement for a country is around two per cent of the total population. With Indonesia’s population having exceeded 280 million, the national blood requirement is estimated to reach around 5.6 million bags per year. Although PMI and various blood transfusion units in hospitals manage to meet most of this need, blood stock shortages still occur in various regions. The issue is not only related to the number of donors, but also to distribution, transport access, and limited blood storage facilities, especially in non-urban areas.
The situation in Jakarta provides an interesting snapshot. Data from the PMI DKI Jakarta Provincial Blood Donor Unit in 2025 shows there were 367,067 donors throughout the year, an average of about 30,589 donors each month. However, during the month of Ramadan, the number of donors dropped to around 20,712 people. This decline shows that blood availability is highly dependent on public participation and awareness. In the capital, the daily blood requirement reaches approximately 1,200 bags. This figure can be met relatively easily due to the high concentration of population and health facilities. However, a different situation is still encountered in various regions far from health service centres. In many non-urban areas, patients must wait longer to obtain blood due to limited stock and distribution.
Therefore, the blood issue cannot be understood purely as a medical problem. It is also a social problem that depends on the community’s willingness to help one another.