Man finds out it is not so easy to donate blood

GEORGE TOWN: A Penangite found just how hard it is to find blood donors when his mother had a health emergency recently.

Wishing to be known only as Sam, the 40-year-old said his mother was hospitalised due to excessive bleeding.

“She is A+. The surgeon alerted us that the hospital was low on this blood type and asked us to contact friends and relatives to donate,” he said.

Sam went on social media with his plea and friends started a group chat to find A+ blood donors.

There was no shortage of people with the same blood type, who rushed to the hospitals to donate, he said.

“They included strangers, who wanted to help my mother, but many were rejected,” he said.

He said they were turned down because they had high blood pressure, long-term overseas stays, had recently changed sex partners or had surgery less than six months ago.

Sam himself could not donate because he was in the United Kingdom for more than six months between 1980 and 1996, when the country had an outbreak of mad cow disease.

“We never knew it would be so hard,” he said.

It took him more than a week to find donors to keep his mother alive. She is now recuperating.

Blood transfusionist Wang Pack Yee said the stringent rules for donor screening was developed by the World Health Organisation and adopted by the Health Ministry.

“If your BP (blood pressure) is high and we still allowed you to donate, your BP will shoot up even higher because your heart will be struggling to circulate a reduced amount of blood around your body.

“After we remove 450ml of blood, your heart must work hard to keep circulation going. You can have cardiac arrest,” he explained.

Wang said 450ml was how much most Malaysians weighing 50kg and above could donate.

Wang urged university and college students to donate regularly, because they would most likely be in the best state of health to do so.

“Youths above 18 must realise how important they are in keeping blood banks stocked.”