Blood of donors vital to Indonesian Red Cross

By Hera Diani

JAKARTA (JP): Do not assume that demonstrations, brawls or even a recent Muslim mass prayer have nothing to do with blood supplies in the capital. They do.

Any large event that people fear could lead to violence makes donors reluctant to go out and give away their blood.

Hospitals then run low on blood and patients in need of transfusions face longer waits.

"If that happens, we have to find donors who are willing to give blood," Sukantini, the head of the blood transfusion unit at the Jakarta office of the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI), told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Sukantini, or Tini, said donors were also hard to find during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadhan.

"Other than those times, we usually have an adequate supply of blood," she said in her office in Kramat Raya, Central Jakarta.

Each year, Tini said, PMI distributes some 300,000 to 360,000 bags of blood to hospitals in Jakarta, or almost 1,000 bags daily. Each bag holds about 100 cubic centimeters of blood.

This blood is, of course, obtained from donors, of which there were 200,752 last year. Of this number, 87 percent are permanent donors.

"The number of donors, thankfully, increases every year," Tini said.

For one bag of blood, patients at general hospitals pay Rp 41,000 (US$3.72) while in private hospitals the cost is Rp 123,000.

"We only receive a small percentage of this money, we call it a service cost," Tini said, declining to state just what this percentage was.

These service costs make up some 91 percent of the unit's operational costs, which last year reached Rp 26.5 billion ($2.4 million). The rest comes from fund-raising.

"But we are still running out of funds. We only have half of the equipment we actually need. As a result, our speed in processing the blood is still low. We also still lack human resources," Tini said.

The delay in getting the blood to the hospitals has been the source of numerous complaints from people in need of transfusions, like Yadi Nuryadi who has to wait in line for about four hours every time his son needs a transfusion.

Yadi's nine-month-old son suffers from Thalassemia, an inherited hemoglobin deficiency of the red blood cells.

Children affected by the disease cannot create healthy red blood cells naturally so they need to receive periodic blood transfusions to replace the old red blood cells.

"My son must have a blood transfusion at least once a month. We usually get it at the nearby Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital. But today the hospital ran out of Type A blood so we came here to PMI," he told the Post on Wednesday.

"But we have to wait up to four hours to get the blood. It can even take as long as 12 hours if we bring our own donor, like my brother did several months ago," he said.

Sterile

While the number of donors at the Indonesian Red Cross increases every year, many people still shy away from donating blood at PMI.

"I would rather donate blood when my company, or any other reputable company, is conducting a blood drive. I am afraid the needles used by PMI are unsterile," said Anton, an employee at a private company.

According to Tini, such suspicions are baseless as every institution that conducts a blood drive gets the needles from PMI, which always ensures the needles are sterile.

"Maybe there is a lack of information among the people. Sometimes you get a bruise after giving blood, but that's only because the person taking the blood has a hard time finding a vein," she said.

While this should not happen, she said, it is not dangerous.

But these worries do not keep some 250 to 300 donors from donating their blood every day at PMI's office, which is open 24 hours a day.

When the Post visited the office on Wednesday, more than 10 people were lying on beds as Red Cross employees took their blood, while several others sat outside waiting their turn.

Most of them have donated blood before, like Sugriwo, 45, who travels from Cikarang, Bekasi, every three months to give blood.

"I have been doing this since the 1980s. I have donated blood at least 85 times now and I feel more healthy," he said, adding that he just wanted to help other people.