On March 13, DonorUA celebrated its ninth anniversary. Over this time, more than 160,000 blood donors have registered on the platform, and over 7,500 patients in need of transfusions have received targeted assistance. The team has conducted over 650 events - on-site donations, thematic lectures and exhibitions, and other activities. To date, the DonorUA community has collectively donated over 29,000 liters of blood, saving up to 195,000 patients.

"In 9 years, the DonorUA community has grown more than 100 times, and we have begun cooperating with the government, businesses, and international partners. Such trust is incredibly inspiring! The organization started working almost simultaneously with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and throughout all these years, we have helped others and developed ourselves. Today, as the war has become full-scale, we have even more keenly realized how important the mission of DonorUA is," comments Iryna Slavinska, co-founder of DonorUA and President of the NGO "All-Ukrainian Association of Blood Donors."

The First 1500 Donors

In 2014, Iryna Slavinska and DonorUA CTO Oleksandr Krakovetsky joined forces to create a registry for quickly finding blood donors. It all started with an Excel spreadsheet where donor data was stored. Later, the project won the SocialBoost startup competition at the international conference IDCEE and received a grant of 100,000 UAH for platform development.

The first version of the DonorUA platform was created the following year, with the first 1500 donors registered. The website already featured the "Bloodpedia" - Ukraine's first information resource entirely dedicated to blood. Finding a donor for a patient on the platform could be done in 2-3 days - within two years, this term was reduced to 20 minutes.

In 2017, the first open data on blood donation appeared in Ukraine. The DonorUA team calculated that about 12 donations per 1,000 population are made in Ukraine within a year (WHO recommends 33 per 1,000). Thanks to us, Ukraine started discussing blood donation issues in terms of data. In 2019, DonorUA began cooperating with the government, participating in the reform of the blood system, and in 2020 received the first support from businesses.

Full-Scale Invasion: Blood fights and saves lives

When Russia started a full-scale war in Ukraine, the blood system faced unprecedented challenges. In these conditions, DonorUA helped the state organize blood transportation for frontline needs - to date, 89 buses have been sent to save wounded soldiers, each carrying hope for 1500 fighters. Since the invasion, over 110,000 donors have registered on DonorUA - a great shared disaster motivated many to join this mission. In 2023, Iryna Slavinska received the AABB Presidential Award (Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biologic Therapies of the USA). The award was given "for invaluable work in maintaining the safety, volume, and continuity of blood supply in Ukraine in conditions of extraordinary challenges." For the first time, the association awarded a Ukrainian organization, and Iryna Slavinska became the first Ukrainian with the AABB international recognition.

Thank you to everyone who supports us and joins the donor movement!