PROLONG LIFE and be champion

Hemofarm corporate relay team defended the champion’s title at 29th Belgrade Marathon! The team whose members were: Saša Karčakovski, Dalibor Aleksić, Marinel Bokšan, and Nemanja Janković, covered the distance longer than 21 km in one hour and 29 minutes, triumphantly promoting the PROLONG LIFE national campaign!

‘It is an honour to be a member of the winning team, but it is also an honour to be an owner of a donor card. Although defending the last year’s first place was a challenge for the Hemofarm relay team, I am proud because our team did not only run for the result, but also for the PROLONG LIFE message. I believe that only through giving we can have something. One organ donor can save several lives, and each of those lives has his/her name and family. I believe that signing a donor card is the noblest act we can perform. It does not require anything more than a pen, and it shows our readiness to change someone’s life. I hope that the Hemofarm relay team, as well as all the colleagues who supported the PROLONG LIFE campaign at the Belgrade Marathon, will help in Serbia’s changing the shameful reputation of a country with insufficient number of donors and insufficient number of saved lives’, said Marinel Bokšan, a member of the winning relay team and an owner of a donor card.

At the Belgrade Marathon event, Hemofarm’s experienced marathon man, Vladimir Grbić, ran the half marathon WHOLEHEARTEDLY with the PROLONG LIFE message, while several dozens of employees and their family members from Vršac, Šabac, and Belgrade participated in the ‘Fun Run’. During the Marathon, many of the Hemofarm employees were signing donor cards at the stand of Hemofarm Foundation, at which doctors from the Biomedicine Administration were providing the interested visitors with all the necessary information on organ donation and transplantation.

‘The main idea and the primary motive for singing donor cards is the desire to prompt the awareness on the importance of transplantation in as many people as possible. Simply and with only one signature, each of us has the power to give hope and chance for a new life to somebody. I am a proud owner of a donor card. I wish to thank Hemofarm Foundation on behalf of all the members of Hemofarm team at the Belgrade Marathon, and in my own name, for providing an opportunity to Hemofarm employees to be a part of the PROLONG LIFE campaign through sports activities’, said Saša Maričić, Independent Expert Associate at the Hemofarm Research and Development Department in Vršac, after the ‘Fun Run’ race.

The PROLONG LIFE campaign, conducted by Hemofarm Foundation, as a partner of the Ministry of Health, for the second year in a row, is dedicated to raising awareness on the importance of organ transplantation and donation.