LABAN WALLOGA | NATION Dr David Lenga Gome, who has vowed to donate blood several times each year until the age of 70 years talks to the Nation about the benefits of the blood donation.
When hospital orderlies wheeled the young mother into the hospital theatre for urgent surgery, the medical team had determined that a blood transfusion was mandatory.
But there was this strict requirement in hospitals that before any pint is taken from the stores to aid a patient, there must be a donation, by a relative or philanthropist, to ensure stock is not depleted.
No volunteer could be found among hospital staff, and as the 18-year-old woman had been accompanied to Coast General Hospital by a 6-year-old girl who was too young to donate, an alternative had to be found for the mother who had just delivered a bouncing baby boy.
Watching the scene unfold, was Dr David Lenga Gome, then a University of Nairobi medical student on internship at the hospital and part of the team assigned to take care of the surgery.
“It dawned on me that I had to either step into the gap and donate blood or see the woman die. I decided to donate,” recalls Dr Gome, now the chief medical officer at the Kenya Ports Authority.
Philanthropic path
That was way back in 1989 and even though the woman failed to rise from her operation bed, the whole episode set Dr Gome on a philanthropic path that has seen him donate blood, often up to three times a year, the maximum number of times allowed by doctors It is his way of ensuring a patient in need of blood gets it at the first instance.
“It is better for blood to wait for the patient than for the patient to wait for blood,” he says, words that have come to form his motto since the first incident of two decades ago.
Years earlier, as a recruit at the then mandatory pre-university National Youth Service, Dr Gome had been bundled into a lorry with his colleagues and taken for his first compulsory blood donation.
“It was the memory of the involuntary experience that gave me the courage to voluntarily donate for a second time. I remembered playing basketball immediately after the exercise without feeling any difference and this gave me the strength to do it again,” he said.
This first-hand theatre experience and the knowledge that many hapless Kenyans out there die for failure to get someone to donate blood for them is what has always fuelled his resolve to continue donating. He has donated 42 times in the past 15 years and is still counting.
Thanks to him and 50,000 other dedicated donors, the country is struggling to keep up with the huge demand for blood to save lives in hospitals serving the 40 million Kenyans across the country. Three out of 10 women die from excessive bleeding after child birth.
“I am due for my next donation next week. That would make it 43 times, but I still have a long way to go. God gives man 70 years to live and anything after that is a bonus. So I plan to donate up to age 70, and thereafter anything that I will give will be a bonus,” the 41-year-old father of two told the Nation.
According to Blood link Foundation’s Programmes coordinator Lynda Wayua, Dr Gome is the leading blood donor in Coast region. Whereas many view blood donation as of benefit only to the recipient, Dr Gome, a surgeon, points out that regular blood donation comes with both psychological and physical benefits to the donor. Besides the feel-good factor, the body gets to replace its red blood cells much faster than the normal 120 days.
There is also the advantage of free medical check-up that comes with every donation. “Naturally, the bone marrow generates new Red Blood Cells after every 120 days, but with donation, the body senses the deficit and restores the cells within 72 hours while the volume returns back to normal almost immediately the donor drinks after donation,” says Dr Gome, as he delves into the science of blood cell formation.
He is already inculcating the culture of blood donation in his older son of nine years by showing him the stub every time he returns from a blood donation exercise. He wants him to be ready for donation by the time he comes of age as part of the celebrations to mark his 18th birthday.
A human body has five litres of blood and a pint takes away some 450ml of the blood. With the rise in population — now set at 40 million — there has been a corresponding rise in need of pints of blood at hospitals across the country.
The perennial shortage has now compelled the National Blood Transfusion Services to initiate a blood donation campaign dabbed “P25” (Pledge 25) which is encouraging the youth to donate at least 25 times in their lifetime.
This way, the national annual blood requirement of 200,000 units will be met. According to the Coast Regional Blood Bank Public Relations Officer Charles Wambua, the province alone has a demand of 25,000 units up from last year’s 17,000.
Comments