Bulgaria is showing no sign of being able to cope with the acute shortage of blood as people are becoming more and more reluctant to join donation campaigns, a Novinite.com check proved.

The major part of the Bulgarians who undergo planned operations ask their relatives to donate the needed blood, falling an easy prey to the black market dealers.

Lingering around the National Transfusion Centre, a group of a dozen gypsies may look like any other Roma men who roam along the suburban streets of the capital, but their real purpose is trading blood for money.

The Roma charge their desperate clients form BGN 200 to BGN 450 for the priceless document that proves 450 ml of blood has been donated. .

It is only after the start of the transition period that Bulgarian hospitals became chronically short of blood for transfusion. Under the communist regime hospitals disposed of sufficient amounts of blood reserves as blood donation campaigns were obligatory.

The number of blood donors shrank dramatically since the fall of communism, leaving patients with yet another psychological obstacle to overcome beside the disease itself and the hospitals' insufficient capacity.

Bulgaria's Ministry of Health says it is recording an ever-declining trend of the number of the voluntary blood donors. Data shows that Bulgaria lags far behind international standards for blood donation - 19 donors per 1,000 people against the required 60 donors per 1,000 people.

Poor economic conditions and low living standards top the list of reasons, together with the fact that blood donation costs time, some pain, and occasionally unpleasant consequences.

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