Some of the unstinting blood donors of Song Cau District, Phu Yen Province.

Formed barely a decade ago, the informal club of blood donors in Song Cau District, Phu Yen Province has grown to more than 2,000 members who will drop whatever they are doing in an instant to save the otherwise doomed.

Day or night, rain or shine, the volunteers respond to the hospital’s frantic call without hesitation. As one of the firefighters among them says, it’s much more important to save life than to extinguish fire.

Even though their mission is voluntary, it can be more demanding than their usual employment as they have no fixed timetable, says regular donor Truong Quoc Duy.

Police officer Nguyen Phung Hoang first donated on May 13 last year after receiving an SMS from Nguyen Huu Khoa, deputy head of Song Cau District’s Red Cross, asking him to give blood for a traffic accident victim with the rare B+ blood type.

The message read “the person will die without a blood transfusion within 15 minutes,” so Hoang rushed his girlfriend home, dropped her off without a word of explanation, and raced to the district hospital.

He returned later to a furious girlfriend whose anger vanished as soon as Khoa told her why Hoang had broken their date so abruptly.

Pham Thanh Binh, who heads the youth league at Hoang Van Thu Secondary School, will always remember the first time he gave blood.

Binh was on his way to another neighborhood on an errand for his boss when an urgent SMS arrived.

He immediately turned his motorbike around to head back but it promptly broke down and he had to run more than two kilometers to the hospital, where the needle was inserted in his arm without ceremony.

Afterwards, worn out and short of the precious fluid in his body, Binh fainted.

For many of the club’s members, the most unforgettable day was January 9 last year, when they took turns donating nearly a hundred 250- milliliter packs of blood for a pregnant woman, a boy involved in a traffic accident, and another boy stabbed by a friend.

Besides the frequent rush times, the club’s 280 permanent members sedately yield up more than 200 packs of blood annually for Song Cau District’s Red Cross to supply Phu Yen General Hospital.

Khoa says they don’t go door-to-door or drive around soliciting potential donors.

Instead, the club arranges get-togethers, primarily aimed at young people, where the members talk about the importance of giving blood and appeal to the community spirit of the people who turn up.

These informal gatherings have done much to swell the ranks of the volunteers.

“Most of the youngsters here are aware that we should help others, so all we have to do is appeal to their idealism,” says Khoa.

Though 70 percent of the regular donors are not well off by any means, they give their all without thought of reward. They go to the clinic, donate blood and leave in silence, asking for nothing in return.

Nguyen Van Hien, a motorbike taxi rider from Xuan Phuong Commune, is happy to take a day off even during the busy holiday season to donate blood in an emergency. The lost income is neither here nor there.

Le Thi Lan, a street vendor in Xuan Tho No. 2 Commune, has left her stall in other hands many times to rush to the hospital and donate.

“A member of my family was saved thanks to the group, so it’s only reasonable that I give my blood to save others,” a grateful Lan explains.

Le The Minh, deputy head of Phu Yen’s Red Cross, says the blood donors of Song Cau District are the most prolific in the province. Since 2004, they have given 30 packs of blood on average every year for emergency cases.

Says Minh, “Many critically injured victims of accidents on National Highway 1A have been saved thanks to the timely and generous blood donations by these people.”

Source: Tuoi Tre