On December 10, the Ambassador of the Slovak Republic to the Republic of Bulgaria – H. E. Mr. Manuel Korček,

awarded with special commemorative plaques the multiple voluntary blood donors and participants in the Slovak initiative "The Most Valuable Drop". This year, it attracted donors mainly from the diplomatic corps. His Excellency opened the award ceremony at the embassy with a speech in which he stressed the importance of blood donation in the current period of a coronavirus pandemic. He specified that every two seconds in the world there is a situation that requires timely blood transfusions to save lives. In this context, it is remarkable that any act of donating the rarest liquid can save approximately three human lives.

The Ambassador reminded that the Slovak Embassy in Sofia implemented the first humanitarian initiative for blood donation in cooperation with the Bulgarian Red Cross and the National Transfusion Center in 2016, when the Ambassador was H. E. Mr. Marian Jakubotsi, and the Consul - Mr. Roman Roth. "Despite the COVID-19 epidemic, we did not break the 5-year tradition, the only difference being that this time the blood donation took place at the National Transfusion Center." The Bulgarian Red Cross has repeatedly expressed its gratitude for the Slovak initiative.

The award ceremony, as an additional expression of well-deserved gratitude to the participants in the gratuitous blood donation, aims to motivate other donors in the future. Everyone who has donated the most valuable liquid to the Slovak embassy at least three times so far has been nominated for the award. H. E. Mr. Manuel Korček, presented commemorative plaques in the form of a glass drop to Mr. Csaba Balázs, Consul of Hungary in the Republic of Bulgaria, to Mr. Martin Hlavicka, Director of Czech Trade Bulgaria, to Ms. Dagmar Ostranska, Director of the Czech Republic center in Sofia, to Mrs. Ginka Dimitrova and Mr. Georgi Georgiev, citizens of the Republic of Bulgaria. At the end of the event, he expressed his gratefulness and sincere gratitude to all of them and wished them a nice and peaceful Christmas.

The material was provided by the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in the Republic of Bulgaria.