Development & Aid, Headlines, Health

PAKISTAN: Blood Donors Save Lives in Peshawar

Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Jun 9 2011 (IPS) - If there’s one thing positive that has come out of the violence in this part of Pakistan, it is that people have developed a culture of donating blood that helps save lives, say doctors in the northeastern city of Peshawar.

“Getting blood has become amazingly convenient, when it comes to saving the lives of victims of terrorism,” says Dr Muhammad Hanif, a medical officer at the Khyber Teaching Hospital in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Hanif cited the many donors who have willingly “pulled up their sleeves to give blood to people critically wounded in bomb and suicide attacks.” However, there is still a shortage of blood donations for other patients.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa lies beside Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban had sought refuge after U.S. forces drove them out of Afghanistan in 2001. Since then, northeastern Pakistan has become the staging ground for a number of bombing incidents that have killed thousands and left many more injured.

For the latest 141 victims admitted, the hospital received 315 pints of blood from donors not related to them. “It is the spirit of the people,” said Dr Jamil Ahmad, blood bank officer at the Khyber Teaching Hospital.

Many in Peshawar are first-time donors, like shopkeeper Ghalib Shah, who told IPS that he had never donated blood before, having heard from someone that doing so caused health problems.

But “last month when I saw some children who were victims of a bomb attack bleeding profusely, I went to donate to the blood bank,” the 51-year-old Shah said.

Vegetable seller Multan Khan is proud of having given blood to a policeman. “I saw a critically wounded constable who had sustained injuries in a suicide attack on Hangu Police Station on May 22. It was the first time I gave blood,” he says.

“I had refused to give blood to my relatives when they had operations, but when I heard about the condition of the constable, I readily gave,” he adds.

Like Khan, people here were reluctant to donate blood, even to relatives. “Due to a lack of education, the people were under the misconception that giving blood caused weakness that led to other diseases,” said Dr Irfan Ahmed, a medical officer at the Accident and Emergency Department of the 1,400-bed Lady Reading Hospital.

A shortage of blood has in fact forced the Khyber Teaching Hospital to postpone usual medical operations like removing kidney and gall bladder stones.

Local haematologist Shahid Yousaf told IPS that people’s unwillingness to donate blood forced hospitals to turn to professional donors who, in many cases, were drug addicts. Pakistan needs an estimated 1.6 million pints per year for the injured and those undergoing operations, he said.

Yasir Kamran, who runs a free blood donation society in Peshawar, says the absence of a culture of voluntary donation made it difficult to treat people with serious illnesses.

“About 90 percent is donated by relatives of patients, in normal circumstances,” he says. Such donations are required, and people must get into the habit of donating blood, Kamran adds.

Among the worst victims of the shortage, he says, are children suffering from disorders like thalassaemia and hemophilia, who require rare negative blood types.

In contrast, victims of terrorism have no problem getting such blood types. “We have stockpiled 2,000 bags of blood in the hospital, which have been donated by people for victims of terrorism,” said Dr Hakim Khan, a blood bank officer at the 600-bed Hayatabad Medical Complex, which has been assigned to receive blast victims with head injuries. “This stock contains A, B, O and AB negative groups. We are not transfusing these to other people.”

“Most victims of terrorism require transfusions. Treating the wounded is a life-saving procedure which requires a lot of blood bags,” said Dr Muhammad Omar at the District Headquarters Hospital in Mardan.

Mardan, one of the 25 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is plagued with militancy that has left more than 300 people injured in terrorism-related incidents over the past five years.

“We still have 523 pints donated by people during the bomb attacks. We used to have problems getting blood, but now people have realised that they can save innocent victims,” Omar said.

Dr Irfan Ahmed at the Lady Reading Hospital says terrorist attacks have changed people’s outlook about blood donation. “We have treated 12,000 persons injured in terrorism-related incidents since 2006. We have received 20,000 pints of blood from donors,” he said. Even the elderly and the underaged rush to hospitals to donate upon hearing news of bomb attacks, he added.

But the surge in donors has its downside, too. “Sometimes, we receive donors in such great numbers, it becomes difficult to manage. We have to examine the health of donors before taking blood from them, but people insist on giving and helping victims of violence,” said Ahmed Ali, blood bank technician at the Lady Reading Hospital.

Ali said campaigns were needed to raise the level of public awareness about blood donation, in order to cover all situations.