Tuesday 23 / April / 2024
Muscat: With the aim to encourage blood donation and to increase awareness about it among the Sultan Qaboos University’s (SQU’s) students and faculty, the Blood Donation Committee and the “Donor 1000” student group at SQU are organising a donation competition between SQU colleges, which began on February 21 and will end on April 9.
The competition had started with a formal opening ceremony under the patronage of Dr. Yuousf Salim Al Hinai, the dean of Student Affairs at SQU.
During the ceremony, a draw was conducted to divide the nine competing colleges into three groups. The first group included the College of Law, the College of Engineering and the College of Economics and Political Science. The second group included the College of Nursing, the College of Education and the College of Science. The third group included the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, the College of Arts and Social Sciences and the College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences.
The competition between the colleges in each group lasted for two weeks, during which the colleges were evaluated, based on different criteria. These included the number of donors from each college, the efforts made by the students to increase awareness in the colleges, and performance of the colleges in the knowledge competition. Finally, the colleges qualified from among the first three groups and will eventually compete in April for the prize.
Dr. Arwa Al Riyami, the chairperson of the Blood Donation Committee at SQU Hospital praised the efforts made by the students for organising and running the competition.
“This competition highlights the important role of the students in spreading awareness about blood donation and in recruiting blood donors to support patients in need of blood at the Sultan Qaboos University Hospital,” Al Riyami said. She also stressed the need for blood donation at the University Hospital as being continuous throughout the year, especially with the expansion of the clinical services offered at the hospital. This initiative highlights the importance of having similar initiatives for encouraging blood donation in the community.
Dean Al Hinai said that such student activities set an innovative example and should be continued in future. He highlighted the positive effect of the competition in spreading the knowledge of blood donation in the university campus.
The blood donation campaigns carried out by the Blood Donation Committee at SQU are ongoing throughout the year within and outside the university campus in order to fulfil the actual needs of blood units for the hospital. In addition, the committee is currently working on disseminating the knowledge of blood donation and encouraging the public to start and continue donating blood.
The Donor 1000 team is a student group in the college of Medicine and Health Sciences. Marwa Al Shukri, the head of the Donor 1000 team said the team was established in 2014 in order to spread the culture of blood donation in the university community and beyond, and to recruit blood donors to donate blood to blood banks.
The team had won the third place for projects submitted in a competition for the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association award for medical students last year.
