Transylvanian music festival offers free tickets in exchange for blood

A TRANSYLVANIAN music festival has found a novel way to solve Romania’s blood shortage.

Organisers of a Transylvanian music festival has taken inspiration from the city’s literary history to solve the country’s blood supply problems. Picture: Untold

A ROMANIAN music festival is offering concertgoers free tickets in exchange for their blood.

Organisers of the Untold Festival in Transylvania, the home of Bram Stoker’s fictional bloodsucker Count Dracula, hopes their Pay With Blood campaign will raise awareness of the need for people to donate blood.

Despite its long association with vampires, Romania has one of the lowest blood donation rates in Europe.

“Given that Romania faces an acute blood shortage in medical facilities, a campaign that takes inspiration from these myths in order to draw attention to a real problem is more than welcome,” the festival’s director general, Bogdan Buta, told The Guardian.

The festival’s PR manager Stefana Giurgiu said her phone “hasn’t stopped ringing” since they announced the unique campaign.

“We were talking about how to incorporate Dracula into our festival and after seeing the numbers and how behind Romania was in blood donations we had this idea,” she said.

“Considering many youngsters in Romania don’t donate blood and our festival is aimed at youth they saw the opportunity.”

Donors will score a 30 per cent discount on tickets if they visit one of the country’s blood centres before Friday, or free tickets if they roll up their sleeves at a designated mobile unit or blood transfusion centre.

Transylvania is home to Bram Stoker’s literary creation, vampire Count Dracula.

Festival organisers said 45 people, many of whom had never donated before, had signed up and given blood by noon on the first day of the campaign.

Only 1.7 per cent of Romanians donate blood each year, and that’s mostly when someone close to them needs a transfusion, according to Romania’s National Institute of Blood Transfusion.

And while it in the bottom three European countries in terms of blood donors, Romania’s need for blood is “very high”, Bucharest Blood Transfusion Centre Director Doina Gosa said.

“The units collected in 2014 were processed to obtain about 110,000 blood products that were sent to hospitals,” Dr Gosa said.

“The demand … is about 200,000.”

Avicii, David Guetta, Tinie Tempah and Wu-Tang Clan are among the headliners of the four-day Untold Festival, held in the city of Cluj-Napoca in the Transylvania region from July 30 to August 2.

Originally published as Transylvanian music festival offers free tickets in exchange for blood