‘Pay with blood’ at Romania festival

Taking inspiration from the world’s most famous vampire, a Romanian music festival is offering free or discounted tickets to people who give blood.

The Untold festival takes place in Transylvania at the end of July, and organisers are hoping that their “pay with blood” campaign will encourage more donors to come forward, the national news agency Agerpres reports. Playing on the region’s association with Count Dracula, posters for the campaign show a vampire hooked up to a blood bag. “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,” says the festival director Bogdan Buta.

Festival-goers who sign up to become blood donors online will receive discounts, and those who show up in person at centres in Bucharest and Cluj will be given one-day tickets on the spot. The campaign is being run in conjunction with Romania’s National Blood Transfusion Institute. Romania has one of the lowest figures for blood donation in the whole of Europe – less than 2% of the population are active donors, far lower than elsewhere in the European Union.

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