51-year-old Charles Bianco of Kalkara this morning donated blood for the 100th time, keeping up a practice he started in November 1976.

He was welcomed at the Blood Donations Unit by Tony Micallef, the staff nurse in charge of donor recruitment, who explained that of the current population of 400,000, there were 300,000 people who were aged between 17 and 64, the period when they could donate blood but half could not donate for various reasons including lifestyle and health.

Of the remaining 150,000 - 40,000 were donors, of whom a quarter made regular donations, 10,000 did so occasionally and another 10,000 only donated blood once. The rest could not donate blood for a temporary period.

Mr Micallef noted that the most required blood groups were O negative, A negative, O positive and A positive.

Most donated blood was O positive and A positive (40 percent each), followed by B positive (six percent), O negative and A negative (five percent each), AB positive (three percent) while the B and AB negative groups shared the remaining one percent.