Afghan Blood Banks Find Willing Donors

Looking pale but pleased with themselves, Mohammad Rahim and Aslam Khan indicated the plastic bags containing blood they had donated.

“I have given blood three times to win heavenly blessings,” Aslam Khan said. “Islam says that if you can save one person’s life, it's as if you have saved the lives of all mankind.”

The two donors are just the latest in a growing trend for young people to give blood in Khost, a province of southeast Afghanistan.

“My blood group is zero, and I’m donating 500cc to a patient who’s in critical condition and desperately needs blood,” Mohammad Rahim said. “His life or death depends on my blood.”

The donation system has improved in Khost since the days when people either had to travel a long way to the main provincial town to offer blood here, or turn up at schools and mosques when roving teams arrived to ask for donations.

A non-government group called Hewad Pal now claims a membership of 6,000 donors across the province which allows a blood bank to be maintained.

“Knowing one’s blood group and being ready to donate is a precondition for membership<” Hewad Pal’s director Lemar Niazai said.

Niazai said blood donations were often called for when people were injured in feuding over land and property.

On the initiative of Khost’s Sheikh Zayed University, a blood bank gathering blood from students has existed for the last four years.

Dr Hedayatullah Hamidi, acting director of Khost’s public health department, says widespread campaigns led by Muslim clerics and teachers have led to a change in people’s attitudes. Donations are made at both state-run and private clinics, helping hundreds of people, both civilians and members of the security forces.

The head of the provincial blood bank, Dr Abdul Salam, said that when patients were given blood, anyone who came with them was asked to give the equivalent amount.

No money changes hands, relieving needy patients of the high cost of buying blood. According to laboratory head Dr Fazelurrahman, people had to pay 30 US dollars per 500 cc four or five years ago, but no one had to buy it any more.

“My baby son has had a blood disorder since he was two months old. Now he is six years old, and every month, people provide him with 500 cc of blood free of charge, which is a great help to us,” Khost resident Almar Gul told IWPR.

Ahmad Shah is a student at Khost University and an IWPR trainee.