Channel 4 is collaborating with NHS Blood and Transplant to show a completely different side to donating blood.

YouTuber Adeola Patronne best known for her shared channel, Meet the Patronnes, will be stepping into a presenter role, and shaking up the blood donating experience by formatting it as a blind date, in a bid to encourage people to start donating blood and save lives.

Donating blood takes less than 10 minutes, and the whole process from start to finish is approximately an hour: From the welcoming with a refreshment, completing a pre-screen test with a nurse and then walking over to the donation area to sit and donate blood.

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Channel 4.0 aims to make this experience a glamorous one in their new two-part series, which will follow eight willing participants on blind dates while they donate their blood and contribute to helping save lives.

Titled Love is in the Blood, every date will consist of one previous blood donor and a first-time donor.

During the 'donation date', YouTube star and presenter Adeola Patronne will quiz the singletons, allowing them to find out all the juicy details about each other. By the end of the date, the singletons will decide whether they'd like to meet or walk separate ways.

The series, produced by Word on the Curb and premiered on Channel 4.0, has already been met with praise. One commenter said: "Loved this and the main idea of donating blood. Go out there and donate to save a life."

Another commented: “What a great idea. All for a good cause too”.

NHS Blood and Transplant datashows the number of people registering to give blood from 1st April to 31st March was 224, 658 in 2023-2024; a dip from 2022-2023 which has 313, 567 registrations. However, the number of new donations did have a slight increase from 2022-2023, which was 119,016 new donations to 2023-2024 being 119,371.

But every year the NHS need around 143,000 new donorsto make sure there is a variation of blood groups and so a range of patients' needs are met.

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Black blood donors are needed so much more and are a priority as56% of black heritage donorsare likely to have the Ro blood type which is needed to treat 15,000 peoplein the UK suffering from sickle cell disease. The disease is particularly common in people of Black African, Black Caribbean or Mixed background.

Currentlyonly 2% of blood donors are of Black heritage which is not enough to combat this condition. They need over 17,000 regular donors of Black heritageto tackle the demand for sickle cell patients. NHS Blood and Transplant are still campaigning to increase the number of Black heritage blood donors and trying to spread awareness on the importance.

This series ultimately hopes to show the positive side, eliminate misconceptions and encourage people to give blood.

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