The blood bank

There is currently something of a competition amongst the housemates to donate blood to the bloodbank. This is not a random whim but a response to what we have recently discovered is a desperate shortage of blood. People die at Hohoe hospital at an alarming rate, partly because people ignore their symptoms for so long that their condition becomes critical, and partly because the staff do not know how to properly treat and assess emergencies, and hygiene is not quite what we are used to.

And then when patients arrive (and staff wait a few days before realizing the seriousness of their illness and then spend a while deciding what to do about it and the patient becomes even sicker to the point of needing extra blood), there is no blood to give them. None at all. The poster on the wall outside reads 'A blood bank without blood is bankrupt' and sadly this particular bank is in much the same state as most other banks around the world at the moment.

Our current obsession with blood began a week or two ago when Kristina came home telling us about a baby in the ward with malaria who would not survive without a transfusion and for whom there was no suitable blood in the bank. So a group of volunteers rushed over that afternoon to try to donate before it was too late. They didn't make it: only 2 had haemoglobin levels above the required threshold (13) and they were not the right type. The baby died later that day, reflecting a story that repeats itself at the hospital on a regular basis.

So anyway, I joined the most recent group of hopeful donors from our house for a long afternoon last week, camped outside the bloodbank. The process of blood donation is similar to what would happen at home, though on a smaller scale. And slower speed - we were there for about 3 hours, and there was barely a queue! We got our blood tested for Hb (don't worry mum: I watched the needle come out of its sterile packet) before testing for blood type / screening for disease etc. Now I am blessed with good veins - about as easy to spot as I currently am in a crowd - but there was still a fair amount of scrabbling around and I felt for Tim, who was the only one to pass the stringent haemoglobin test, and whose veins are something of the proverbial needle in a haystack.

There was a student nurse there - he came to donate blood because his patient was haemorrhaging and needed it: his sense of responsibility for the situation humbled me as I considered the infrequency with which I give blood back at home. Unfortunately this was a rare incident: this kind of initiative (or in fact any kind) is not hugely prevalent and people do not appreciate what they personally can do to help, even when it is within the remit of their job!

The idea of blood donation is alien even to medical staff it seems: Julianna arrived home one day last week in the usual state of appalled shock because the doctor in A+E spent the morning hunting for the person who had donated blood to one of the deceased malaria babies so that the baby's father could pay them! Julianna suggested that anonymous donations were free, to which one of the nurses argued that if they were to go to a store to purchase blood they would have to pay, so therefore the donor should be paid. Another nurse worried about where the donor would get more blood to replace the blood they had donated. The local convenience store it seems (!)

see photos