Blood donation not just for emergencies, says thalassaemia sufferer

SINGAPORE — Ms Kymn Yee seems like any other active 39-year-old. She goes for yoga classes, scuba-dives once or twice a year and works full-time as an educator.

However, every three weeks, she has to spend nine hours in a hospital to get a blood transfusion, because she has thalassaemia.

The blood disease, a severe form of anaemia, affects the body’s ability to produce normal haemoglobin in the blood.

Ms Yee was diagnosed with thalassaemia major when she was just six months old and has had to receive blood transfusions since. This means that most of her veins have been exhausted and every time there is a transfusion, she has to find “fresh veins” for the needle.

Taking this in her stride, she told TODAY: “I lead a near-normal life. A lot of my friends and colleagues, including my boss, don’t know that I have thalassaemia. Nobody can tell.”

While Ms Yee’s B+ blood type is fairly common, she has encountered times during festive periods when the blood stock in hospitals ran low, especially during her younger years. Over the last decade, this has not been an issue.

“More people are giving blood now … I’m very grateful to them, and also for them taking the time to donate blood. A lot of people think it’s for emergencies, but for people like us, it’s for sustenance and quality of life.”

To help people like Ms Yee, the Singapore Red Cross (SRC), which is the national recruiter for blood donors, on Monday launched a campaign — which runs from Tuesday to Sunday — with the Health Sciences Authority.

Mr Benjamin William, secretary-general of the SRC, said that the awareness generated by last year’s campaign led to a 16-per-cent increase in blood donations in the launch month, compared with the same period the year before.

Current donors are encouraged to donate more regularly.

SRC said that an estimated 118,750 units of blood are needed this year — or about 325 units every day — to meet blood transfusion needs. The blood-donor pool stands at 1.87 per cent of Singapore’s residential population, or 73,587 people.

Financial adviser Tan Chin Hock, 39, has donated blood 29 times over the past eight years and plans to do so again tomorrow. “It started with an SMS I received, alerting us that stock for the B blood type was running low. I thought, ‘Why not? ... It’s within my means’,” he said. “I do hope that more people can step forward ... It’s not as exhausting and scary as people think it is.” LOUISA TANG