There are Red Cross signs all around the world but only a very small percentage ever donate blood!
As a very young man, I started work for an international chemical company in Chadstone, Victoria and during my first week there a Red Cross Bus charged into the car park and immediately we had to form a queue, with most employees donating their blood. Every 3 months the same Bus would visit, and we would all donate once again.
It became a lifetime habit for me, and I ended up donating for over 60 years. In all my years of travelling around the world, I always managed to donate...Greece, Turkey, UK, Ireland, Italy and even Morocco and they were all much the same. Some countries paid donors a small amount to donate but most didn’t.
My biggest surprise was in Kuwait. I was hitchhiking and my driver dropped me at the new hospital, facing the Harbour.
The sign at the front steps was always the same “Blood Donors Needed Urgently”!
The hospital was one week old. They took my A+ donation and gave me $60USD in cash! I used some of that money to get to Afghanistan a few months later.
Fifty years on I was still donating but now I’m peeved (I love that word!) as the Red Cross will no longer allow me to donate due to my age of 80.
I’m very proud of my achievement!
John A. Wilson
Pottsville. February 2024
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