In mid-November last year, Emilio Kinyua faced a disturbing choice to make.
On one side was an elderly woman crying and begging him to donate his blood to her dying daughter.
Minutes later, he was brought a sick man, who was ready to pay him Sh10,000 for a pint (about half a litre) of his blood.
“I first went to Pumwani [Maternity Hospital] and volunteered to donate blood. I also told them I would mobilise Kenyans to donate. They held a meeting and said they didn’t have the capacity to collect blood and referred me to Kenyatta National Hospital,” he explains.
This was November last year. Kenya’s blood banks have been running nearly dry since 2019 when the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) stopped funding the Kenya National Blood Transfusion Service.
When Covid-19 struck in 2020, the country sank to its worst blood shortage in more than a decade.
Kenya requires between 500,000 to one million units of blood a year, yet collects less than a quarter of that volume.
“So I went to KNH and explained to a security guard that I wanted to donate blood. He immediately told me ‘come’, and led me to this woman crying, with her sick daughter. Her daughter was in need of two pints of blood,” he says.
KNH usually gives a letter to patients who need blood, indicating what blood type they need and why. They use this letter to beg for blood from their relatives and friends or to buy from private hospitals at Sh4,500 per pint.
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