Fast forward to 1999. I wanted to buy some furniture for my house. Fermin, my better half, and I had visited a shop "Iron Butterfly" to buy a sofa set. On our earlier visit we could not meet the owner of the shop. On our third visit my wife insisted that I call him on his mobile and ask him to meet us at the showroom. I called up Mr Firoze Shapurji on his cell. He said he can't meet me that day as he was busy searching for a unit of Blood of the Group "O-ve" for a welder who works in his workshop. I immediately told him that I could help him as I was a regular blood donor since my college days and had donated quite a few units of blood during my NCC days and had quite a few voluntory blood donation cards with me. I could exchange a card in any of the blood banks for a unit of blood.
But that was not to be. I visited about 3-4 blood banks in Nagpur but could not get a single unit of blood. Anyhow Mr Shapurji who is quite a well known personality in Nagpur found a donor for the patient. But the patient needed a lot of transfusion. He passed away after 2 days. When I came to know about it. I was quite disturbed.
This incident got me thinking as to what must be happening to patients who go from one city to another city for treatment, where they have no one to help them. What must be happening to patients who suffer from cancer and need a lot of blood transfusion.What must be happening to children who suffer from sickle cell and thallesemia and who need frequent blood transfusions every month.
I told my wife that we had to do something about this. A solution has to be found to solve this problem. But how it could be done we did not know. We resolved that we would surely do something.......
