By IANS,
Anandpur Sahib : As many as 18,207 people from various states across the country donated blood in a single day at a camp set up in this Punjab town, officials said Wednesday.
The Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) and various other Panthic (Sikh) organisations under the aegis of the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikhs, Wednesday organised the camp.
“We have registered 18,207 donors in 24 hours. The blood donation camp concluded at 7 a.m. Wednesday,” Jaswinder Singh, media coordinator of the organising committee, told IANS here Wednesday.
“Over 1,800 donors had came from Nagpur, Maharashtra, in a special train to take part in this drive. Besides, 40 buses from Delhi, 25 from Rajasthan, 30 from Jammu, and nearly 125 buses from all over Punjab ferrying donors had reached here,” Singh said.
He said 250 doctors, 1,500 para-medics and nearly 3,000 volunteers were engaged in the camp.
The camp is being held on the occasion of the Sikh festival of Hola Mohalla, which coincides with Holi.
“Right now, we cannot tell you the exact number of men and women as our volunteers are still busy in calculating the separate figures. However, one thing is for sure that we have set a new world record and we would send all the recordings of the camp to the officials of Guinness Book of World Records for their scrutiny,” Singh said.
The collected blood has been sent to more than 110 blood banks of various medical institutes in the country.
“Special arrangements were made to airlift the donated blood to different parts of the country so that the blood could reach its destination at the earliest,” Singh said.
Singh said: “Initially it seemed to be a difficult task for us. But after getting the green signal from the SGPC, things automatically started shaping up.”
Anandpur Sahib, 85 km from the state capital Chandigarh, is known for the Sikh shrine Takht Keshgarh Sahib.