Emmanuel Blessing |
When you say no to an offer to donate blood, do you really understand the consequences that come out of that no? Many are the times that so many people like you do not know or appreciate blood donation, a session that only takes less than 10 minutes but you always come up with so many reasons not to do it not knowing that you, a family member, a friend or even a colleague might be in dire need of just a pint of blood and only to die due to lack of it. Your act of blood donation will not only save so many lives in hospitals but it will be an improvement to the number of blood donors in Kenya…
 In 2009 Mr. Bernard N Miruka lost his third born son at Kenyatta Hospital after late diagnosis of jaundice, a condition that needs blood transfusion to have it cured. Mr. Miruka, the Creative Department Head and Experimental Training Manager for Factual Films Ltd brought awareness among public on importance of blood donation and encouraged people to donate blood in the 2008 Safaricom blood for life campaign that was organized by Bloodlink Foundation and Safaricom as any other work he was assigned to do. Little did he know that his fourth born son, born in 2010 would need to be transfused. Emmanuel Blessing was born normally and looked normal like any other new born baby, Soon after delivery Mr. Miruka requested for a thorough health check up to be done on his baby boy to assess whether he had jaundice, sadly the medical report showed that baby Emmanuel had traces of rhesus jaundice in his blood, this called for the doctors to put him in a photo box to monitor the levels of rhesus jaundice for some days. After three days it was noted that the level was rising each day of which in a photo box the jaundice level should decrease with time, on consulting the doctors Mr. Miruka was told to give it time more time to access the situation.
On the fifth day, the doctor in charge informed Mr. Miruka that the baby needed to have a complete blood transfusion to save his life and the only place this was available at the moment was at the Mater hospital or Gertrude’s Children’s hospital. On consulting the hospitals, a deposit of 70,000ksh or 100,000ksh respectively had to be paid before admission of the baby. After considerations Mr. Miruka opted to take the baby to Mater hospital but to his surprise Jamma hospital could not release his wife and child for further treatment without having settled a bill of 53,000ksh that had accrued. He threatened the management to sue them if anything happened to his son since it was a matter of life and death, later at 6:00pm the management agreed to let him take his son to Mater hospital and leave the mother at Jamaa Hospital until he settled the bill. At Mater, the doctor assed the baby and concluded that baby Emmanuel needed to have blood transfusion to remove the jaundice infected blood and be transfused with blood free from jaundice since his jaundice levels were so high. Unfortunately, the baby could not be transfused with blood from the blood bank but only fresh donated blood could be used. What now lingered in Mr. Miruka’s mind was where would he get a donor at that time of the night, do you call friends to come testing if of group B+ and donate? At that time Mr. Miruka phoned Mr. Joseph Wang’endo of Bloodlink Foundation asking for assistance but unfortunately at that time of the night getting a B+ blood donor was a problem, Mr. Wang’endo told him to ask the hospital to do whatever they could do to get that one pint of blood and save the life of this small baby and the next morning he would get the hospital 100 pints of blood, if blood was the issue here. The other possible donor was Mr. Miruka’s wife but due to blood donation regulations she could not give blood due to the fact that she had just delivered.
In the midst of debating with his sister in-law on what to do, a young middle aged gentleman roughly 20 years of age walked in the hospital went straight to the doctor and told him that he wanted to talk to him, the doctor told this young man that he was very busy with his patient, Mr. Miruka, but the boy insisted,’ ‘it won’t take long, just a question I would like to ask.’’ Only then was he given the chance to say what he wanted…… ‘‘I am a B+ regular donor and would like to donate blood right now.” The doctor went to the laboratory but this time he took long in whatever he was doing, on such a time it seemed like the world was closing in on Mr. Miruka, every second wasted meant a lot. Mr. Miruka approached the gentleman and asked what prompted him to come donate blood at that time of the night, to this gentleman donating blood was a regular thing, he had donated blood six times in his life time and on this day as he was heading to meet up his friends, he felt the need of doing it that time, this prompted him to alight a matatu that he had boarded heading to town and pop in the hospital and donate blood. Talk of angles sent from heaven, talk of miracles and this one would be a perfect example. To this gentleman, donating blood meant a lot that he had to lie to his friends waiting for him in town that he was in matatu nearing town yet he was sitted in a hospital bench waiting to donate blood. Still waiting, a lady friend that Mr. Miruka had offered a lift in town the previous Friday, not knowing that she worked at Mater walked in, on hearing Miruka’s story she immediately took the blood donor in the laboratory and within exactly seven minutes the blood donor was out of the lab. Samples were taken for tests to check for its compatibility with that of baby Emmanuel and if it was free from any infection. At this point the lady friend asked Mr. Miruka to go home and have some rest, at 2:00 pm the doctor called him, thinking that it was bad news he answered this time the doctor wanted to get a go ahead to perform the blood transfusion. Being a new born, baby Emmanuel did not have any visible veins but the doctor promised to do whatever it took to have the transfusion successful. Blood was transfused via the umbilical cord since it was fresh, an outlet to remove the jaundice infected blood and an inlet to transfuse the clean blood was used. Mr. Miruka could not sleep waiting and praying for the life of his son. The doctor called him again at 6:00 am and asked him to first go to his office before checking in at the nursery, this brought to him the suspicion that the transfusion was not successful and his son was dead. On arrival to the hospital, Mr. Miruka went straight to the nursery and not the doctor’s office, the nurse on duty happily greeted him and asked him, “umekuja kutuona?’’ (Have you come to see us?) , to Miruka’s surprise he was given a hospital coat to wear and was asked to wash his hand as a formality before checking in at the baby’s nursery, on arriving to his sons photo box he could not believe what he saw, baby Emmanuel was jumpy and playful unlike what he looked the previous day, not believing he bent to check Emmanuel’s ears and eyes to confirm that truly it was him. After two days of being in the photo box the baby was confirmed to be progressively improving and the jaundice levels were decreasing, later he was taken home but sadly after two days his mother noticed he had yellow eyes and yellow urine. Immediately baby Emmanuel was rushed to the hospital again and this time was put in the photo box luckily after four days the baby was very healthy and fit to be back home with his family.
It is now 9 months since, and baby Emmanuel is very healthy, happily growing and ever since, he has not gone to the hospital on jaundice problems.
The only question I ask myself is, had the donor not showed up, what would be the story at the moment? It’s a personal initiative, something you don’t have to wait for anyone to tell you to do, take the bold step and save a life, and as Leo Rosten said, “the purpose of life is not to be happy but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, and to have it make some difference that you have lived at all |
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