World Blood Donor Day 1868. World Blood Donor Day celebration brings a precious opportunity to all donors for celebrating it on national and global level as well as to commemorate the birthday anniversary of the Karl Landsteiner (a great scientist who won the Nobel Prize for his great discovery of the ABO blood group system). The theme for Blood Donation Day in 2018 is 'Be there for someone else. Give blood. Share life' The theme for Blood Donation Day in 2017 focus on blood donation in emergency situations. The first response when an emergency happens is "What Can You Do?" and the answer is
Karl Landsteiner of these achievements. For his pioneering work, he is recognized as the father of transfusion medicine. After World War I, Vienna and the new republic of Austria as a whole was in a desolate economic state, a situation in which Landsteiner did not see any possibilities to carry on with his research work. He decided to move to The Netherlands and accepted a post as prosector in the small Catholic "St. Joannes de Deo" hospital (now MCH Westeinde) in The Hague and, in order to improve his financial situation also took a job in a small factory, producing old tuberculin