During the first week of working at Hospital Temeke, we discovered that the blood bank stores are empty. They don’t give blood transfusions because there simply is not any to give.
This shocked me beyond belief. The instance where one would need blood is at the hospital, but now, even being at the hospital won’t offer much promise in that department anyway. So hope you don’t bleed too much.
For those who are familiar with my passion for giving blood, I jumped at the chance to find out how we could help.
We got the low-down on where and when and how to donate, and the following week I ate a big lunch, drank lots of fluids, and walked to the Lab... just a few convenient steps from the Maternity Wards.
Usually how it works is you can only take from the blood bank if you can give it back. So, ideally, if someone is having a surgery, make sure you bring a relative along who can pay his dues in blood so that you can get yours, and live.
But what if a mother is having a postpartum hemorrhage? Uncontrollable bleeding and she’s just one of many, on a bed with a few others, admitted a few days earlier, her family waiting at home for her arrival?
What about the relative-system there? No one steps in to give for her. Nor would it even be at the top of their mind in the first place.
So, as a result, we have a hospital with two operating theaters, mothers hemorrhaging everyday, (and countless other cases in different wards), and a nonexistent blood bank.
I opened the door to the lab and told reception,
“I want to give blood.”
The few lab assistants that were there asked me what the patient’s name was that I was supplying it for.
“What? No, I just want to give.”
“But what is the patient’s name?”
“There is no name.”
....
after a few puzzled minutes, amidst the translations and broken English, a light bulb clicked on and his eyes lit up.
“Ohhhhh,
oh?
...You just want to give?”
Smiling, I nodded.
Still confused that there was no clear face behind my voluntary action, he ran up the stairs and got a bag.
They aren’t even set up for donations, because I suppose the occurrence is so rare, they just take them as they come. So they make me a seat in the corner of the only room they’re using. I sit in an office chair, and I watch a man do his work in front of me. He sits on a stool at a desk with a pile of sterile syringes, servicing the long queue of people waiting their turn to get blood taken for malaria and HIV. The line continues out the door and winds and wraps around the whole outside waiting area.
So I sit in my little office chair in the corner, and “my screening” begins.
Do you know your Hb level? - no.
He pricks my finger and I have a high level of 13. (That’s good.)
How old are you? - 20.
Do you know your blood type? - O+.
Have you given before? - yes.
Well, I guess let’s get started. The lab assistant opens the vaccuum-sealed sterile blood kit, finds my good vein and as he’s putting the needle in my arm, he asks me one last question:
Did you have anything to eat today?
Oh boy. This is so not like Canada.
What about the series of questions and stations and signatures and consent and blood pressure and history taking and if I feel well or am on medication?
Nope.
Thankfully I did eat beforehand and no I don’t have malaria and no I don’t have HIV and yes I’m feeling well.
The needle is in, and the bag is filling up.
“So, is the blood bank empty?”
He looks up at me, blankly.
“Some types are empty. Others are low.”
He’s holding the needle in my vein with his hand, and in ten minutes its over. That was fast. Usually it takes at least twenty. I guess he used a large needle... large and fast. The bigger the tap the faster it is.
I feel fine, absolutely fine until I look over and see my burgundy life, no longer in me, in a bag on the desk.
Black stars. Oh boy, do I really need to go through this again. I lay my head between my knees and resist the faint. Yes! It worked. I regain alertness and I’m okay.
“Thank you, you’re all finished.”
He takes a vile to be tested and screened,
and writes in the book,
Fia Merkeley, 20, O+, free donor.
I ask him if I can sit down for twenty minutes or so before I leave. (Canadian Blood Services protocol!)
He shows me to an empty room, and I rest and drink and eat some more food that I saved for the post-donation moment.
Refreshed, and revived, I get up and go.
Well, that’s that. 1 unit of blood in the bank.
But what a situation. And how to mend it?
This is the thing. Blood cannot be created, it can only be given.
And yet I can’t imagine the people voluntarily going out of their way to visit the hospital to donate blood.
It would be the last thing on their list... after sorting the beans, selling chapatis, washing the clothes, feeding their children, walking the miles, sweeping the walkway, finding work,
learning to read.
Plus add in the constant malaria, anemia, and prevalent HIV, and you don’t have the best blood to begin with anyway.
This is the predicament: If in Canada, where only 3% of the people who are eligible to give blood actually donate,
what does that look like in a place like this?
(For my own records:)
November 5, 2009 Hospital Temeke, 450 mL (1 unit)
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