Songs are commonly used in educational public health programmes to facilitate the understanding of health messages. During the COVID-19 pandemic, national blood banks witnessed a pronounced reduction in blood donors. Thus, we created a song with the title 'Keep the World Beating' to raise awareness of the need for blood and to promote blood donation. To maximise participation, we carried out a live broadcast of the donation process and the music video on social media, increasing visibility and accessibility to the event. The number of donations increased in the month after the song was released. Songs can be used to strengthen current entertainment-education strategies promoting blood donation and to increase the level of awareness among the local population, thus motivating people to donate blood in a time of need.
Keywords: COVID-19; blood donor; health promotion; song.
© Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2022.