On those rare occasions when I do something selfless, I try to remain silent. The Bible warns against boasting about how charitable we are: wise counsel.
But in one thing I break this rule. I go on and on about donating blood. This is because I want people to know how fun it is and start doing it.
It’s partly the ritual of arriving and getting a blood test. Part of it is the knowledge that you won’t get anything material out of it. Here, for once, in a busy little room, you can do something just because you want to do it. There is no deal, no pressure, no payment.
There is always the charm, patience and good humor of the staff. Yes, there is a little sharp pain when inserting the needle, but it really isn’t much. The problem is that most people have no idea that this is the case and have never considered doing it.
Donating blood was once again a part of normal life. Large workplaces, which are much less common, would hold donor sessions in nearby church halls, which are also less common.
It’s been more than 60 years since comedian Tony Hancock recorded his sketch about donating blood, in which he ends up recovering after injuring himself with his bread knife.
The show is a historical archive of a vanished world, in which Hancock wears a trench coat and a pork pie hat and the doctor wears a white coat and stern glasses and speaks like a caricature of an upper-class professional in times of war.
Hancock must donate one British pint (‘almost an armful!’ as he puts it) instead of the current 500 milliliters.
A woman donates blood to the sun during World War II. Blood donation was once much more a part of normal life, writes PETER HITCHENS
Blood donors giving a bunch at an NHS clinic. Millions of people see blood donation as an old-fashioned suburban practice for middle-aged people, which is somehow no longer necessary.
This air of nostalgia may be the problem. Millions of people may regard blood donation as an old-fashioned suburban activity, dating back to wartime and post-war austerity and somehow no longer necessary.
Blood donation seems to come from the same era as mass X-ray and tuberculosis hospitals, iron lungs and wooden crutches.
When I first donated blood, at the University of York in the 1970s, the process was wonderfully archaic, with nurses in caps and starched aprons, a reverent silence during the procedure, blood stored in glass bottles, and recovery rooms with iron-framed beds covered with clothes. gray blankets with red stripes.
Afterwards I was never (as some claim) offered a refreshing pint of Guinness, but I was offered strong tea in a china cup and a plate of Huntley & Palmers biscuits.
The event changed my life for the better in a surprising way.
Donors were given a large paper packet of iron pills and instructed to take them for two weeks afterwards, with a good breakfast, every day.
Thanks to this instruction I began to get up early to have breakfast as a matter of course, unlike almost all of my fellow students who tended to sleep until noon.
I found that I enjoyed the early starts and breakfasts, and I never fell asleep again.
There may be other reasons why students did not donate much blood in those days.
In Oxford in the 1960s, according to a widely believed legend that I have never tracked down but which I find entirely credible, a special donation session was held so that revolutionary university students could donate blood to the Viet Cong guerrillas then fighting against the Americans in Vietnam.
Many liters of Trotskyist blood were collected and then taken to East Berlin for processing. The story goes that when East German doctors tested for impurities, Oxford’s blood was so laced with marijuana that it all had to be flushed down the drain and therefore never reached North Vietnam.
After all, blood handlers have to be careful that what they put into sick and injured patients isn’t contaminated.
Nowadays, the donor faces a fearsome way in which he must confess, before donating blood, to having abused drugs, to having practiced some type of fairly liberated sexual activity or to having taken moderately exotic trips (you would be surprised to know how many places rather common are suspected thanks to insect-borne diseases such as West Nile fever). Dental work can be risky.
A close-up of a man donating blood. Approximately 47,500 donors give blood each week and hospitals need around 113,000 donations a month, but the short shelf life means stocks must be constantly renewed.
They sometimes frown at me when I admit to taking paracetamol for a headache a few days earlier, but they usually go further. This may also discourage some people, but it is necessary.
It was almost certainly a shortage of donors that caused the terrible Hepatitis C and HIV contaminated blood scandal that lasted from the 1970s to the 1990s. In an effort to treat and help people with hemophilia, Britain obtained supplies of blood products from the United States, many of which came from blood that had been paid for and therefore should never have been used.
It is very likely that the blood or blood products paid for were provided by people with infected or dangerous blood. As a result, tens of thousands of men and women were infected with hepatitis C and HIV thanks to contaminated blood or infected clotting factor products. It has been estimated that more than 30,000 patients received contaminated blood, resulting in at least 3,000 deaths. Any study of this case will make you deeply angry.
The best answer would be to start donating blood as soon as possible; This will make it much less likely that this shameful tragedy will be repeated.
But now something else has gone wrong. Over the summer, the NHS appealed for people with type O blood (which can be given to anyone) to donate urgently, after stocks fell to unprecedented levels in England. The shortage followed a crisis caused by unfilled appointments at donor centers and increased demand after a cyber attack hit services in London.
And, last week, NHS England asked blood donors, rather plaintively, to book and keep their appointments; Last Christmas saw the lowest monthly donation total since 2020.
He has urged donors to book over the next six weeks to ensure the nation has the blood hospitals need this Christmas.
Last December, the National Health Service in England raised around 108,000 donations, ten percent less than the monthly average.
Blood donors cared for by a nurse at a health center in Lewisham, south London, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Approximately 47,500 donors give blood each week and hospitals need around 113,000 donations per month. But blood has a shelf life of only 35 days, so supplies need to be renewed all the time.
None of this shortage would occur if there were more regular donors. And it cannot be assumed that today’s elderly donors will be around forever.
There is a limit to how often donors can give blood: men can donate every 12 weeks and women can donate every 16 weeks.
Donors ages 17 to 24 make up only 7 percent of the donor base. And an additional 200,000 new donors are needed each year to meet demand.
If you’re not one of them, consider becoming one this Christmas. Once you’ve provided your first stroke, don’t be surprised if you can’t stop doing it.