Giving life to hundreds of people has become second nature to one dedicated blood donor. Niamh Hooper reports.
If one pint of blood can save up to three lives, Dr Aine Sullivan's sideline habit has breathed life into hundreds of people.
The Cavan GP, last February, gave blood for the 100th time. In reaching the landmark, she says: "I was rejected for everything under the sun over the years except for being under eight stone - I was never accused of that!"
Living opposite a surgical hospital as a very young child in the 1950s she recalls that when Mr Moloney was in trouble in theatre he'd send the porter across the road saying "come quick" and her father would go galloping across the road to donate blood.
As a result, she always knew giving blood saves lives. With O positive blood pumping through her veins and arteries, she remembers the first time she gave blood as a teenager. "I was walking down the street one day and I met my Da who was a GP and who had gone to give blood but, because he was sick, couldn't. He stopped me, flipped down my eyelid and said, 'You're a big lump of a young one and have more blood than you'll ever need, go down there to the Protestant Hall and give blood,' so I did."
Having since worked for years in maternity hospitals - in Drogheda, the Coombe and the Rotunda - she continues to give blood because she knows one minute a woman is having a perfectly normal delivery and the next she's losing her blood and there's yelling for more. "There's many the night I was glad the Cavan farmer had got off his tractor and came into Gowna to donate."
Those women in the maternity hospitals are among the 1,000 Irish people being given a blood transfusion every week. Yet only 5 per cent of the eligible population donates regularly. Such is the shortage, last weekend hospitals across the State were asked to cancel elective surgery for four to five days until stocks were replenished.
On her way to making her 100th donation she says it felt like she was rejected 40 times but it was only 22. The reasons varied from being anaemic, to having travelled to a country where malaria might be present, to having a cut on a finger, for having had an operation too recently and for having a head cold. But key to the whole blood bank operation is that a person goes back, she stresses.
The statistics show that one in four will need a blood transfusion at some time in our lives. For 70,000 of us that will be this year.
Kieran Healy, the donor services manager of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS), says the greatest challenge facing the service, especially since the introduction of precautionary restrictions, is having a sustainable blood supply consistently throughout the year. Some 3,000 units are needed every week which means 3,600 people are needed to visit the blood service centres every week because a 20 per cent deferral rate has to be factored in.
"The pool of donors has been reduced significantly, especially since the people who received a blood transfusion since 1980, which was a very loyal group of donors, have been excluded from donating as a precaution to counter variant CJD and we're beginning to see the consequences of that. Our blood stocks aren't as high as we'd like," he says.
"Traditionally, the stocks drop during the summer months so we are actively calling people to consistently give blood."
He adds that the shelf life of the red blood cell is only 35 days so everyone giving blood at the same time is counter-productive as the donor is then ineligible to give blood for another 90 days. To be eligible you need to be between 18 and 60 for first timers and 67 if you're an old pro. With the average male carrying over five litres of blood, would we really miss about a half litre?
"In our modern medical treatment, the oil in the engine of the health service is the blood supply and the need is great. The demand is only met by a supply coming from the pure altruism of people who are willing to give the time and make the effort to come in to our clinics and donate. Often, we find, the joy is in the giving. Once people give a unit of blood they are fulfilled with a great sense of achievement. It's much more primal than putting money in a box for charities."
The IBTS needs to collect 160,000 blood donations every year. Blood transfusions are used not only for treating trauma victims and people undergoing surgery but also cancer patients and elderly anaemic patients. The IBTS has three fixed centres - in D'Olier Street in Dublin city centre, Stillorgan and St Finbarr's in Cork - and six mobile units.
Although Aine Sullivan's dad availed of the generosity of a fellow donor later in life in the treatment of a stomach ulcer, she has never needed the service. But as she prepares to give blood again she's getting a kick out of the screening questions now asked.
"God, when I read the questions now I think I'm leading such a boring life," she says. "There's a whole section now about have you had sex with a man who has had sex with another man, have you had sex for drugs, have you had sex for money and all these incredible questions to protect people from Aids and Hepatitis A, B and C. I'm always thinking one of these days I'll be filling in yes everywhere - my life is about to become very exciting. And then you remember the Loreto Nuns!" she laughs.
World Blood Donor Day is on June 14th.