NDA (II) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 145 of 146

Correct — B, Be there for someone else. Give blood. Share life. That was the World Health Organization's theme for World Blood Donor Day on 14 June 2018, and its emphasis was on blood donation as an act of solidarity — the idea that a community which gives voluntarily is one that can be relied on in an emergency. What makes this item genuinely hard is that the other three options are not invented. Each is the real theme of one of the three immediately preceding years, so a candidate who has revised the topic but not the sequence has a one-in-four chance and no way to reason it out.

• (a)Blood connects us all — This was the theme for 2016, not 2018 — two years earlier. It is a real World Blood Donor Day slogan, which is exactly why it is here.
• (c)Give blood. Give now. Give often — This belongs to 2017, the year immediately before. It is the nearest miss in the list, and the one most likely to be marked by someone who revised the previous year's current affairs. The booklet prints it without a closing full stop, as it does the other options.
• (d)Thank you for saving my life — This was the 2015 theme, the earliest of the four. It was framed from the recipient's side rather than the donor's, which is a useful way to keep it distinct from the 2018 wording.

World Blood Donor Day is observed on 14 June, the birthday of Karl Landsteiner, who was born on 14 June 1868 and discovered the ABO blood group system, work for which he received the Nobel Prize. Before his discovery, transfusion was close to a lottery, because incompatible blood causes the recipient's antibodies to clump the donor's red cells. The World Health Organization uses the day to press for a supply based entirely on voluntary unpaid donation, on the reasoning that donors who give from choice rather than for money are both more regular and safer.

Theme-of-the-day questions cannot be reasoned to; they can only be recalled, and this one is set up so that partial recall is punished rather than rewarded. The only defence is to revise such items as a short sequence — the year and its slogan together — rather than as a single fact. It is worth noting that these themes change annually, so the 2018 wording in the key is correct for that year only and should not be carried forward as the current theme of the day.

• World Blood Donor Day is observed on 14 June each year.
• The date is the birthday of Karl Landsteiner, born 14 June 1868, who discovered the ABO blood group system.
• The 2018 theme was Be there for someone else. Give blood. Share life.
• The themes of 2015, 2016 and 2017 were Thank you for saving my life; Blood connects us all; and Give Blood. Give Now. Give Often.

• Marking the previous year's theme, which is the commonest error when four real slogans are offered.
• Confusing World Blood Donor Day, 14 June, with World Health Day, 7 April.
• Carrying an old theme forward as though it were permanent; the slogan changes every year.

Asked as a pure recall of an annual slogan, with the three preceding years' genuine themes used as distractors.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  World Blood Donor Day is observed every year on

  • (a)7 April
  • (b)14 June
  • (c)1 December
  • (d)8 May

  Answer(b) 14 June — the birthday of Karl Landsteiner, who discovered the ABO blood group system.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The scientist whose birthday is marked by World Blood Donor Day discovered

  • (a)the circulation of blood
  • (b)the ABO blood group system
  • (c)penicillin
  • (d)the structure of haemoglobin

  Answer(b) the ABO blood group system — Karl Landsteiner, whose work made safe transfusion possible.