Kiran Verma, who is on a 21,000-km walk to create awareness on blood donation in India reached Mangaluru on Tuesday.
He had started his walk for blood awareness in India from Thiruvananthapuram on December 28, 2021. "This walk is going to be the longest blood awareness campaign ever by an individual in the world” which will run for more than 2 years," said Kiran.
The mission for the walk is to spread awareness about blood donation among people so that nobody should die waiting for blood in India after December 31, 2025.
"Due to rising Covid cases voluntary blood donation in India has come down drastically in the last two years. This walk is to encourage people to donate blood so that blood banks and hospitals don't run dry on blood," he said.
Till now he has crossed Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha, Ernakulum, Thrissur, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Mahe, Kannur and Kasaragod districts covering more than 650- km and reached Mangaluru. His next cities for his walk are Udupi, Wayanad, Coimbatore, Madurai and other parts of Tamil Nadu.
Kiran Verma started 'Simply Blood' when his blood was sold to a poor family in Delhi. On December 26, 2016, he had received a call where one person told Kiran that there was a poor family from Raipur, Chattisgarh who needed blood and Kiran went to the hospital to donate blood to that family. After donating blood when he went to meet the family, he got to know that the person who called Kiran had collected Rs 1500 for the blood, which he had donated for free. He got to know that the woman who paid for his blood got into prostitution to pay medical bills.
This was hard to digest for him and the same day he left his job and started the awareness campaign. Kiran Verma is a Delhi based social worker who founded “Change With One Foundation” under which he runs two programmes Simply Blood and Change With One Meal.
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