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17 February 2021 | Story Andre Damons | Photo Pixabay
Two final-year MBChB students show how it is done when they donated blood earlier this year.

Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) staff and students in the Faculty of Health Sciences have challenged other departments in the faculty as well as other faculties and departments at the University of the Free State (UFS) to see whose staff and students will donate the most blood!

Mrs Angela Vorster, UFS Clinical Psychologist, says the South African National Blood Services (SANBS) has been appealing for increased blood donations since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. In order to provide support, the School of Clinical Medicine at the UFS held a virtual blood donation challenge in 2020, to encourage students to participate in altruistic behaviour and to enable the pre-clinical platform year groups to also feel like they are providing essential medical assistance.

“This was hugely successful and consequently we decided to include a blood donation challenge in our annual Mental Health Awareness programme. The benefits of donating blood are not only of a physiological nature (e.g. it assists in reducing iron levels and helps to control high blood pressure etc.) but means you are giving something of yourself. It will definitely save at least one life, perhaps more, and is incredibly beneficial in enhancing feelings of self-worth and personal meaning,” says Vorster.

The Faculty of Health Sciences invited the SANBS to UFS this week to provide all students and staff with the opportunity to donate blood at their place of work and study. So Have a Heart and take a few minutes to relax with a cookie and cool drink while your heart does the work of blood donation for you.

Details are as follows:

When: 18 and 19 February

Where: Francois Retief Foyer UFS

Time: 07:00-14:30

News Archive

International scholar talks about the right to food in South Africa
2012-06-06

 

Prof. Frans Swanepoel, Senior Director Research Development; Prof. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr; and Prof. Melanie Walker.
Photo: Supplied
06 June 2012

Prof. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr of the New School University, New York, in the United States of America, recently presented a seminar on the Bloemfontein Campus. The seminar was hosted by Prof. Melanie Walker, Senior Professor and SARChI-nominated candidate for Higher Education and Human Development.

Prof. Fukuda-Parr, currently Head of the Graduate Programme in International Affairs at the New School University, spoke about the Right to Food in SA. She explored the relationship between two approaches – human rights and capabilities (or human development). This was done to enhance the understanding of both as theoretical paradigms, as public policy frameworks and as approaches to development.

Prof. Fukuda-Parr is a Japanese national, a graduate from Cambridge University in the UK and a former professor at Harvard University in the USA. From 1995 to 2004, she was main author and Director of the UNDP Human Development Reports.
 
In addition to these reports, some of her publications include: The Gene Revolution: GM Crops and Unequal Development; Readings in Human Development; Rethinking Technical Cooperation - Reforms for capacity building in Africa; Capacity for Development - Old Problems, New Solutions and numerous papers and book chapters on issues of poverty, violent conflict, gender, human rights and technology. She was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General to the Committee on Development Policy.

 

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