A blood-brother to thousands

SARGODHA: A police officer has donated blood more than 250 times since the age of 18.

Muhammad Qaiser Sialvi said that he had started donating blood at the age of 18 and is now 34 years old. He has been donating over a dozen times a year and has encouraged his entire family to donate blood. “I first started donating when I planned to join the police force and visited several hospitals to see how desperately our medical centres require blood,”
he said. Sialvi, whose blood group is B negative, became a regular donor  and says that he finds the act of giving blood ‘incredibly satisfying’. “If I have the chance I will donate organs and when I die I plan to donate my eyes and skin to local hospitals as well,” he said.

A university road Sargodha resident, Sialvi said that he had even formed a local organisation titled ‘Al-Khidmat Welfare Society’ in 1990, where dozens of people are provided blood free of cost.

I hope to someday expand the organisation to other districts but at present I am hopeful that more and more people will join in the organization and donate blood. Sialvi said that he had encouraged several of his colleagues to donate blood.

According to medical officials, Pakistan currently requires an average of 7,800 blood donations daily but many people resist donating blood due to a prevailing prejudice against donations. Dr Zahid Ansari, a program manager for a blood transfusion authority said that “While there is a looming threat of terrorism in the country, scores of people die due to clashes in the city, it requires cooperation on the part of our society, and sadly there are facilities but not enough volunteers to donate blood.” He said that many people still believed that donating blood was bad for one’s personal health, “if anything, the opposite is true, donating blood is healthy and it cleanses the body,” he said. People of all blood groups need to donate blood, among them the most important are people who belong to the O-negative blood group, considering that there is usually panic in any hospital when such a patient is brought in.

Published  in the Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2010.