HEALTH AND WELLNESS

                         “Transfusion medicine will continue to be a little like walking through a tropical rainforest, where the known paths are clear but still require careful navigation, and new and unseen threats may still lurk around the next corner to trap the unwary.” –Ian M. Franklin, professor of transfusion medicine. After the worldwide AIDS epidemic cast the spotlight on blood in the 1980’s, efforts to eliminate its “unseen threats” intensified. Still, huge obstacles remain. In June 2005, the World Health Organization acknowledged: “The chance of receiving a safe transfusion … varies enormously from one country to another.” Why? In many lands there are no nationally coordinated programs to ensure safety standards for the collection, testing, and transport of blood and blood products. Sometimes blood supplies are even stored dangerously –in poorly maintained domestic refrigerators and picnic boxes! Without safety standards in place, patients can be adversely

                    Blood is to health care as oil is to transportation. Oil, is that the most precious of fluids? In these days when fuel costs often soar, many might think so. In truth, though, each one of us carries around a few liters of a far more valuable fluid. Think of it: As billions of barrels of oil are extracted from the earth every year to quench mankind’s thirst for fuel, some 90 million units of blood are drained from humans in hopes of helping those who are ill. That staggering figure represents the blood volume of some 8,000,000 people. Still, like oil, blood seems to be in short supply. Medical communities worldwide warn of blood shortages. What is it that makes blood so valuable?                                                      A UNIQUE ORGAN Because of its amazing complexity, blood is often likened to an organ of the body. “Blood is one of the many organs –incredibly wonderful and unique.” Unique indeed! One textbook describes blood as

                              “I cut my wrists so bad I had to get stitches. At the time, I told the doctor that I cut myself on a light bulb, which was true –I just didn’t mention that I’d done it on purpose.” -Cecil, 23. “My parents have noticed my cuts, but only the ones that aren’t so bad and look like scrapes… Sometimes they’ll see one they don’t recognize, so I make up an excuse… I don’t want them to know.”-Kris, 13. “I had been a self-injurer since I was 11. I knew of God’s high regard for the human body, but even this did not deter me.”-Jenny, 20. You might be familiar with someone like Cecil, Kris, or Jenny. It could be a schoolmate. It could be a sibling. It could be you. In the United States alone, it is estimated that millions of people –many of them youths –deliberately hurt themselves by various means such as cutting, burning, bruising, or scraping their skin. Deliberately hurting themselves? In the past many would link such behavior