Another great opportunity to serve humanity..

Money makes Friends, Blood Makes Brothers"

"The only postive thing about me is my Blood group" 

Last evening, 3 Nov '21, when I contacted Dr. Sitalakshmi, St Johns hospital in Bangalore, she asked me to get ready for a voluntary apheresis procedure this morning. It was a great God given opportunity this morning to voluntarily donate platelets through an apheresis procedure for 2 kids aged 4 and 12 suffering from critical bone marrow illnesses. 

Click here for my earlier posted detailed researched explanation of the apheresis procedure, what it is and how safe it is ..

3 months back I had donated whole blood, my 41st donation. Since then every two to three weeks I have been doing platelet apheresis, where the whole blood is passed through a centrifuge and only platelets are separated, about 200ml or 3x10 ^^11, and the blood is sent back to the body. 

Today a 4 year old kid and 12 year old kid, waiting for bone marrow transplants at St Johns Medical college Bangalore benefitted from 100 ml each of my platelets.

From a whole blood donation, they get 70 ml platelets, but from each platelet  apheresis they collect 200 ml platelets, equal to about 3 whole blood donations. More effective and productive. To the donor it makes more sense. Since my last whole blood donation, after three months the next whole blood donation would have helped just one patient,  but the four platelet apheresis procedures have benefitted at least 8-12 needy patients.

The Key Performance Indicator (KPI) of any voluntary blood donation is the number of critically ill patients who have benefitted. 

My friend Sandra from Goa had this to say, " You should create awareness as  more people can benefit. A person like you creating awareness and a hospital creating awareness is very different. More people will come forward when people like you tell others....and, do  not create awareness under the umbrella of any hospital".

My only fear is awareness creation should not be misconstrued as selfish image building. Being a socially beneficial activity,  I request more people to come forward and donate blood or specific blood components.

I have no words to thank and appreciate the blood bank department from St. John's MC Bangalore, led by Dr. Sitalakshmi and her capable team of senior residents and others, who have been a humble and selfless source of inspiration for the donors. A big thanks to all of you .. 🙏🙏

George