Hemofarm Wins VIRTUS Main Award for Philanthropy

Hemofarm is the winner of VIRTUS Main Award for corporate contribution at the national level for campaign supporting organ donation and transplantation programme in Serbia – THE MOST IMPORTANT CALL IN LIFE. In cooperation with the Ministry of Health, Hemofarm and Hemofarm Foundation, as the jury decided, raised public awareness about problems faced by people on organ waiting lists and influenced creating a positive attitude towards adoption of the new Law on Transplantation in 2016.

THE MOST IMPORTANT CALL IN LIFE is the campaign which helped in changing how organ donation is perceived in Serbia through cooperation with the highest institutions of the society, state and the city of Belgrade, and made the first success – June 6^th has been declared the National Donor Day. In the long run, the goal of the campaign is to create a better and healthier society which would result in a greater number of donors in Serbia and give people from waiting lists a new chance at life.

‘Organ donation and transplantation in any society should be a topic of the utmost public interest. With only three donors per million citizens, Serbia is at the very bottom of the European donor list and our campaign is aimed at making donation no longer an incident, but rather a normal occurrence as is the case in some European countries and the region.Donation is enormous hope for the entire society and its future. Because of that, I invite you to become donors, if you haven’t done it so far, and I also invite you to join us in contributing to THE MOST IMPORTANT CALL IN LIFE, so that it can have its full meaning’ – Ronald Seeliger, CEO of Hemofarm and Vice President of STADA Group for South East Europe, said.

A documentary THE MOST IMPORTANT CALL IN LIFE was filmed within the campaign and it presented powerful confessions of people waiting for transplantation with the aim, apart from changing the Law, to also change the public awareness in Serbia and accept donation as a voluntary act and an expression of solidarity of each and every one of us.

The traditional annual VIRTUS awards were presented for the 10^th time, marking a jubilee, in order to name the companies which have contributed to the general welfare by providing funds and other types of support to non-profit drives or civil society organizations.

Hemofarm was one of the first companies here to start nurturing corporate social responsibility, more than two decades ago when Hemofarm Foundation was founded, and this is the fourth VIRTUS award for corporate social responsibility.