Man on 21,000-km walk for blood donation awareness reaches Pune

Verma’s walk is purportedly going to be the longest blood awareness campaign ever by an individual as it will take more than two years. “Due to rising Covid cases, voluntary blood donation in India has gone down since the last 2 years,” he said.

Verma is the founder of non-profit Change With One Foundation under which he runs two programmes, Simply Blood and Change With One Meal. In 2018, he travelled 16,000 km across India, covering more than 6,000 km on foot, for the same cause.

Simply Blood is a virtual blood donation platform, connecting blood donors and seekers in real time, free of cost. It was launched on January 29, 2017 and till date has saved more than 35,000 potential lives through blood donations.

To support Verma’s walk, 48 blood donation camps have been organised in different parts of the country through which more than 7,239 units of blood have been collected. Apart from the camps, more than 3,000 individual blood donors have donated blood in their personal capacity at different blood banks across India and abroad to support this campaign. A 3.5 km marathon was also organised in Varanasi where more than 100 people participated.

Till now, Verma said he has walked several districts across the country, covering more than 6,800 km. “The next destination after Pune will be Solapur and Latur,” he added.