`Hyderabad Blood Donors': Meet Shravan Bandi, the techie who saves lives

He was suffering from dengue fever and need a donor who could donate platelet. After failing in their efforts, they approached Bandi Sravan. He lost no time to donate blood. However, it was too late by then.

This incident really moved Shravan, who was only 19-year-old then. He realized that many patients were dying by not getting blood donations on time. So he decided to start Hyderabad Blood Donors.

Donating blood was nothing new for Shravan, as he made it a habit to donate blood on his father's birthday and donate it to the poor ever. Sharvan started the Hyderabad Blood Donors group in 2015. He started as a one-man army. But today he has over a hundred volunteers.

Initially, he tried to entertain small blood donation requests and slowly increased the blood donor circle with the help of friends and their friends. It was not an easy task to find donors without any support. But Shravan and his team took the help of social media to create more awareness.

"Children with thalassemia need blood transfusions every 15 days. Those little kids will not survive unless they change the blood as part of their treatment. I have approached many celebrities who are helping in creating awareness among donors regarding thalassemia. Unfortunately, many people are not aware of this disease. After the social media awareness, many people have come forward to donate blood to children suffering from thalassemia. I am also approaching other celebrities. I hope that more celebrities will come forward and increase awareness about it on social media. It will encourage more blood donors," said Shravan, 26, who works as an analyst in an IT company,

Hailing from Dharmapuri village, Jagtial District, he has donated blood 19 times so far. He is the first point of contact on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for blood requests in Hyderabad. He runs a social media page `Hyderabad Blood Donors'. Thousands of citiznes from the twin cities have tagged for blood donation requirements. He arranges blood donations on a regular basis mainly for Thalassemia patients.

"Apart from finding the donors, we haven't faced any problems as such until the lockdown happened. Since June 2020, we have been facing a lot of problems with fake donors. These fake donors are demanding money for petrol from the patient's attendants, stating that they are students. Sometimes they even switch off their phones after collecting money due to how many patients and their attendants end up waiting for the blood donors. If we don't find these fake donors, they may risk patients' lives by not helping them on time. That's the reason we have decided to make a list of fake donors with their numbers so that we can file a police complaint against them," he said.

Until now, Shravan and his team have made over 25,000 blood donations and saved many lives. They also have a team of more than five thousand donors readily available for exigencies. He aims to further connect with more donors by creating more awareness among the people.

Shravan's wish is to see more people coming forward to donate blood and save as many lives as possible. And this is the only reward Shravan wants for working on a noble cause.