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What Muslims Really Stand for!!!

Wednesday, 15 October 2008

A friend in need is a friend indeed. Read on to know how Mohammed Baghdadi, a 23-year-old muslim proves this adage.

In an attempt to promote awareness, Mohammed Baghdadi, a 23-year-old employee at the Blood Donor Center in King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, has created a Facebook group to explain blood donation procedures and how they could be instrumental in saving lives.

“My main purpose in creating the group was to explain the process to people so that they would be more aware,” said Baghdadi.

The group discussion includes details about everything related to donating blood and platelets, starting from how to donate blood and platelets, blood types, what happens after donating the blood and the platelets, physical and moral advantages of giving blood, laboratory procedures and whether it is risky or not to donate blood. “Many people think that donating blood is a risky process or it is bad for their health,” Baghdadi told Arab News. “Most of the times the people who donate blood are relatives of a patient in a critical condition. Therefore, we don’t have a big number of volunteers,” he added.

“I wanted to let people know everything about blood donation and how useful it would be,” he said.

After creating the group on Facebook and having 476 members, Baghdadi said that the idea was met with satisfaction, especially by young men and women.

“We had a good number of volunteers. We had people who were younger than 17 and wanted to donate blood. Our policy was not to accept donors younger than 17; we told them to come next year,” he explained.

The process of donating blood starts with registering the name and filling in a form of 52 questions to verify health conditions and backgrounds. After answering the questionnaire, the blood donation center determines whether he/she is capable of donating or not. All equipment is fully sterilized and for one-time use.

“A blood donor can donate blood once every two months and a maximum of five times a year and platelets donors can donate up to 24 times a year,” said Baghdadi. “We take 450 ml of blood from each donor,” he said. Baghdadi believes more awareness would be raised in the future. “People have begun to see the bigger picture,” he said.

Faisal Ahmed, a 33-year-old father of three went to donate his blood after seeing the group on Facebook. “After filling the questionnaire and going through all procedures it took only 10 to 15 minutes for them to take the blood,” he said. “I didn’t feel dizzy after I had finished. They also gave me a muffin and juice as part of their procedure to make sure the donor is fine after the process,” he added.

Ahmed said that after he was done, he went out and played football with his friends. “I felt really good after the donation. I used to have a headache. Now it is fading away and I started to lose weight and I feel more fresh than before,” he said.

Ahmed will repeat his blood donation experience every two months because he feels it is his duty to the society and it is one of the best ways to help others.

Baghdadi posted on his Facebook group that every three seconds a person is in need of a blood transfusion and one of every ten people in hospital also needs blood.

Courtesy : arabnews

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