Meet Rajasthan’s ‘Blood Man’: An illiterate, daily wage worker saving lives for 30 years
Amar Singh has voluntarily donated blood 73 times and organized 330 blood donation camps in Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab.
He can’t read and write, but 50-year-old Amar Singh sure can teach one and all many a lesson in selflessness.
A resident of Hanumangarh district’s Shyodanpura village, Singh has earned the epithet of ‘Blood Man’ and quite rightly so. An illiterate daily wage worker, he has voluntarily donated blood 73 times and organized 330 blood donation camps in Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab.
Such is his belief in the social cause that he even organized a camp at the wedding venue of his son in 2007 where his family members and guests donated 114 units of blood. He organized a similar camp in 2011, during post death rituals of his mother who had died three days ago. He even motivated his family members to donate the corneas of a niece who died at the age of 14 years.
Incidentally, all of this started with a road accident victim in 1985. “I was going to work on my bicycle when I found a Sikh man lying on the road after an accident. I carried him to a hospital in Sirsa (Haryana) across the border where doctors asked me to donate blood for him,” remembers Singh.
“That was the first time I donated blood. The injured man was saved. Till then I didn’t know that by the simple act of donating blood, I could save someone’s life. It gave me immense satisfaction. It was an accidental discovery, but it gave my life a mission, which has now became a passion,” he adds.
Rest, as they, is history.
Singh started donating blood on regular basis and also motivated hundreds of others. “With the help of Indian Society of Blood Transfuion and Immunohaematology (ISBTI) and other social organisations, I organized a large number of blood donation camps in last 30 years,” he says.
ISBTI chief and retired IAS official, Dr Yudhbir Singh, confirms that they have records of “Singh donating blood 73 times and also organising 330 blood donation camps.”
Former ISBTI president, Dr VP Gupta says Singh has rightly earned the epithet of ‘Blood Man’ by “donating thousands of units of blood by motivating others.”
ISBTI recently felicitated Singh. Several social organizations in Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab too have felicitated Singh in the past.
Registered as a MGNREGA worker, Singh makes around Rs 4,000 per month, which he says “sufficient to run the family” that comprises his wife and two sons.
He has also pledged to donate his body for medical research.
Ask what keeps him motivated, and the 50-year-old replies: “Everyone lives life for self, but it gives immense pleasure helping the needy and bringing smiles on faces of others. I associated myself with the cause of blood donation as human blood cannot be prepared in any factory, and only a human can help a human when blood is needed”.