Blood for Sale

There is this scene from the movie Pursuit to Happiness starred Will Smith when he sold his own blood drained from his veins in exchange for cash. This is a familiar scene in the Philippines where men and women sold their bloods to buy nourishment for their starving kids.

In Santa Cruz alone, a district in north Manila, Philippines there are more than 30 blood banks operating 24/7.  It actually became a booming industry and their main resources are the city’s poor people, those who earned money to feed themselves or only to sustain their vices, and also the drug users and prostitutes.

These blood banks are licensed by the government to help the shortage of blood supply in hospitals but they appeared to have fallen short of the required specifications by the country’s department of health.

Most of these blood banks has an average area of 70 to 80 square meters with its basic apparatus for blood examination, blood typing, and manned with four to six well-trained staff.  Most of their so called nurses are pretty women to lure young and unemployed male blood sellers.

The department of health have warned public to refrain from buying bloods from unscrupulous blood banks which supply may have come from people with long history of TB or probably have suffered from hepatitis, and worst infected by AIDS. Your liver would actually be the first organ in your body that would be inflamed if you are a recipient of blood from these sources.

This is a sad fact but a reality in the Philippines where most of the blood sellers have contagious diseases but they bleed to live.