• A Delhi-based social worker’s 21,000 km walk to create awareness on blood donation
• Reached Mysuru on Saturday after covering more than 1,000 km on foot

Mysore/Mysuru: In a bid to create awareness on the importance of blood donation, Kiran Verma, the 37-year-old social worker from Delhi, has embarked on a 21,000 km journey across the country by foot, the longest blood awareness campaign ever by an individual, which runs for more than two years.

Kiran, who began his walk from Tiruvananthapuram in Kerala on Dec. 28, 2021, covered Kollam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Thrissur, Mallapuram, Kozikode, Mahe, Kannur, Kasargod, Mangaluru, Udupi, Chikkamagalur, Bengaluru and Mandya districts, covering more than 1,000 km and reached Mysuru yesterday.

Speaking to Star of Mysore, Kiran said that the number of blood donors had decreased in two years due to COVID-19 pandemic and added that thousands of people had died due to non-availability of blood.

“To encourage blood donation and to see that no one dies due to lack of blood, I started my ‘Walk for Blood’ from Thiruvananthapuram on Dec. 28, 2021. Covering over 1,000 km in 40 days, I reached Mysuru on Saturday and during the walk, I have conducted about 12 blood donation camps in which more than 700 people donated their blood,” Kiran said.

Kiran said that he started ‘Simply Blood’ when his blood was sold to a woman from a poor family in Delhi who was forced into prostitution to pay medical bills for her husband’s treatment and added that the same day he left his job and took this as his goal that “nobody should die because of lack of blood by 2025 in India.”

Pointing out that more than 12,000 people fail to get blood in India daily, Kiran said that if 5 million youths start donating blood, then there will be not even a single death due to non-availability of blood in India.

Kiran Verma is a Founder of ‘Change With One Foundation,’ under which he runs two programmes ‘Simply Blood’ and ‘Change With One Meal.’ In 2018, Kiran had travelled 16,000 km across India covering more than 6,000 km on foot for the same cause. Kiran left for Coimbatore from Kote Anjaneyaswamy Temple yesterday and will cover Madurai, Ooty and other places in Tamil Nadu.