25 percent of over half a million bags of blood come from donors: Quantum

Bangladesh needs over half a million bags of blood in a year to save lives and treat patients, and 25 percent of those come through regular donors, according to the NGO Quantum Foundation.

There are blood donors who have reached the 25th time mark in donating blood, as giving blood on a regular time-frame does not affect a healthy person’s body in any negative way.

The Foundation on Friday invited about 200 voluntary donors who have donated blood from 10th to 25th times to acknowledge their rare gesture donating blood to save someone’s life or to facilitate someone’s on-going treatment.

Doctor, blood donors and patients were among the speakers who shared their life experience relating to blood donations at the meeting presided over by Quantum Blood

Donation Programme Chief Convenor Nahar-al-Bokhari.

“Quantum provides 100,000 units of nearly 600,000 units required in the country in a year,” said Quantum adviser and BSMMU Centre for Palliative Care Head of the Department Nijam Uddin Ahmed.

“For the remaining 75%, people turn to friends and relatives or to professional blood donors,” he added.

Many patients want blood from relatives without screening which is a ‘dangerous’ practice, according to the Quantum adviser.

At Friday’s function in the capital, 21-year-old Nilofar Yasmin, a thalassemia patient since childhood, said that her ‘survival depends on blood transfusion’. She has been receiving blood from Quantum Lab since 2005.

“A delay in blood transfusion triggers a host of problems in my body which includes loss of appetite, blurring of vision and weakness,” she said.

In an impassioned plea to the people, she said, "Please do not stop donating blood. If you stop I do not know what will happen to me and the likes of me. I cannot express my gratitude in words." Her voice was choked with emotion.

Donor Samina Mustarin had a touching story to share as remembered meeting two '5 and 8-year-old siblings’ both thalassemia patients and surviving on blood transfusion from Quantum Lab since 2004.

“The sister refused chocolates that a Quantum personnel offered and asked him to give blood instead,” Samina said in teary eyes.

“The incident brought tears in my eyes,” she said adding people should understand how important it is to donate blood.

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Vice Chancellor Prof Kamrul Hasan recalled how timely donation of blood by Dr Sujal Banerjee, a cardiologist known to him saved his wife's life at a time when she urgently required blood and he was frantically seeking it.

"I can never forget this incident," he said.

He recalled how as a young medical student, he and a bunch of friends at Mymensingh Medical College in 1971, first experienced the satisfaction of saving someone's life by donating blood to an ailing rickshaw puller's wife.

The friends went on to start Sandhani, a platform for voluntary blood donors that he and his friends started from their alma mater.

Despite still being associated with Sandhani, he praised the important role played by Quantum Foundation in making blood available to those in need by encouraging voluntary blood donations.

Any healthy person between 18 and 60 year of age can donate blood, the doctor said, explaining that it is just like cutting one's nail or hair. “The more one donates blood the more actively it is formed in the bone marrow.”

Attempts at producing artificial blood are yet to become successful, he said, adding, "Blood has no alternative."

In the welcome address, Quantum adviser and BSMMU Centre for Palliative Care Head of the Department Nijam Uddin Ahmed said that the country requires some 600,000 units of blood annually of which Quantum alone provides 100,000 units, the largest contribution made by a single body.