In short B negative blood is urgently required. Contact Erin

[gonzales]

Hi Guy's, maybe you or one of your friends fit the bill:

In short B negative blood is urgently required. Contact Erin 9833-4954

My friend's little boy, Barney Allan Jeffs, is in need of B negative blood. The blood bank does not have any B negative blood in storage as it is fairly uncommon blood type in Asians. If you are B negative blood type please contact me so we can add your name to a donor list specifically for donation to Barney. The Blood Bank will follow up by contacting you to ask you to come in and donate. If you contact the blood bank directly, they have told us they will give the blood to the next B negative recipient in need.

Barney is 5 years old and he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia unexpectedly on Tuesday. His only symptoms were that he had been tired and pale during the past week. Today Barney had a bone marrow aspiration test to type his Leukemia and received his first infusion of Platelets and Blood to increase his blood count to an acceptable level so that he can have a central IV line placed tomorrow. The line will allow him to start receiving chemotherapy. As there was no B negative blood available in Singapore this evening, he had to be given B positive blood tonight. This not only increases his chances of a reaction to the blood, but it means he has to have a special injection so that his body won't react to the rhesus positive blood. As you can imagine, each additional injection is torture to a five year old!

Barney's battle with Leukemia will be a long and hard one. The family has been living in Singapore several years and his mom Annie is Irish and his dad David is from New Zealand. They are alone here without family to help them through this, so any support we can give them by trying to get donors is very much appreciated. Please help to forward the request especially around the Caucasian communities in Singapore that are more likely to have people of B negative blood type. The hospital has explained that Barney will require many transfusions of blood and platelets over this initial first week of treatment and in the coming months and a list of at least ten donors will be needed.

Thank you to those who have already started circulating information out. Please do have people continue to contact me if they can donate. We have already had a great initial response of 5 Irish B negative donors tonight but more are needed. Please contact me by phone or email with your name, IC or passport number, contact number and date of birth so I can collate the listing to send to the blood bank.

[carolynW]

I am B positive, not sure if that helps?

[sierra2469alpha]

Carolyn - RH negative, so possibly not.

@ Gonzales - can the lad tolerate O neg ( neg rhesus) ?

[gonzales]

thanks everyone who has been working on helping.

just got an update, they have sourced adequate supplies for the moment however as this is a rare type in Asia people can proceed to the red cross blood bank in order to build up the reserve.

Regards,
G.

[barbaraus]

Do you happen to know the answer to sierra2469alpha question as to whether he can also take O- ? O- is considered "universal" donor so other blood types in additon to tolerating their own can usually tolerate O-.
If this is the case, then more people would be able to donate.. Would be good to know in case the supply runs out again..

[batgirl_cdn]

O- is a match for blood transfusion, but from what I read it is better to have type specific blood to reduce the chance of any negative reactions. So it is much better to find B- than to use anything else. Some info from wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type

[sierra2469alpha]

Batgirl-cdn - true - a proper typing and crossmatch is something much better than a blanket run-in of O-. However, having been a paramedic (amongst other professions), we were often given O- at major trauma scenes in AUS (usually by motorbike courier!!!) as you can only increase blood volume with plasma expanders such as Haemacel before you need to replace the actual platelets.

The other thing, slightly off topic, but very relevant, is understand that if you give blood, many countries will also make use of your own blood plasma. That's quite a life saver in many ways, within itself.

Cheers, Mr. P