Media announcements calling for urgent blood donations are not new in Phuket, and the hospitals and blood banks regularly ask for donations. It’s just that as the number of foreigners on the island increase, blood supplies, and particularly those blood groups that are rare, become scarce.

Your blood is grouped and categorised by its makeup. All of us, Thai and foreigners have a blood group which is A, B, AB or O. This classification is then further defined as either positive or negative; more correctly termed Rh positive or Rh negative.

Most Thais, that is 99.7% of the population, have Rh positive blood. It becomes immediately clear that the blood banks in Thailand therefore have extreme difficulty getting Rh negative blood from Thai donors because for every 1,000 donors, statistically, only three will donate Rh negative blood. That is clearly not enough; particularly when only about 1,000 Thais donate regularly, each month in Phuket.

Foreigners have a much higher incidence of Rh negative blood, at around 16%. So for every 1,000 donors, blood banks would collect about 160 units of blood. The other side of the coin, of course, is that for every 100 foreign accident patients who need blood, 16 of them will require Rh negative blood. With only around 20 foreigners who donate blood regularly each month in Phuket, and the limited number of Rh negative blood collected from the Thai population, the hospitals never have enough stock of this type of blood.

Facts

• You can’t give blood from one person to another unless it’s a match. A person with Rh negative blood can’t receive Rh positive blood.
• When people donate blood, they usually give one unit, around 500ml.
• Many accident patients need many units of blood to survive; some as many as 10-15 units.
• Rh negative blood is rare, very rare, not just in Phuket but all over Thailand.
• We can’t get Rh negative blood from the Thai population, they don’t have it.
• Only a very few foreign people who live in Phuket with Rh negative blood are regular donors.

When a foreign patient is admitted to hospital and requires Rh negative blood, stocks can be exhausted quickly and urgent calls are then made through the media to obtain more.

What can, and is being done?
Phuket International Hospital maintains a Blood Donors’ Database where we check people’s blood for free at the hospital and record these details, with their contact details. If people already know their blood group, they can enter the information themselves directly on to the website www.phuketinternationalhospital. com. The hospital then makes this database available to other hospitals and the blood bank in Phuket. If blood is then needed, people who are on the database are contacted to make a donation. This saves valuable time and is a life-saving community service. If you’re a foreign resident of Phuket, please get checked for free at the hospital, and become part of the database. If you know that you’re Rh negative, we really do need your details. Please remember that if you’re Rh negative and have an accident, you may need the blood of other donors.

As a tourist or visitor to Phuket, you can also donate blood; it can save lives. Blood collection, screening and distribution is performed by the Phuket Regional Blood Centre, and their brand new building and facility is located next to the Phuket Provincial Employment Office at 38/193 Rattanakosin 200 Pee Rd in Phuket town; telephone 076 251178 or mobile 081 413 4004. If you donate, the procedure is carried out according to international standards. No appointment is needed, just turn up and tell the staff you want to donate. You’ll be made very welcome, the process will take about 45 minutes and whilst all blood is greatly appreciated, you’ll be particularly wellreceived if your blood is Rh negative.