How Did One Man Save the Lives of Two Million Babies?

(Newswire.net — June 10, 2015) –He is like the goose that lays the golden egg, only it is his Golden Right Arm.  His name is James Harrison and he has donated his special blood nearly every week for the past 60 years and donated blood plasma from his right arm. The reasons why his blood is special can be traced back to a medical procedure he underwent as a teenager.  He had a chest operation at that time and they removed a lung, he is now aged 78.  He had thirteen units of blood for this chest operation, and his life had been saved by unknown people donating blood for him. Now he is a donor himself to help save others and pay it forward.

As a doctor, I have ordered thousands of these tests in the last 3 decades to see if there is a problem with mom being Rh blood type negative instead of positive.

A worldwide problem

After Harrison became a donor, doctors told him that his blood could be the answer to a deadly problem to save babies. Worldwide there are literally countless numbers of babies dying each year, and women were having numerous miscarriages and babies were being born with medical problems and serious brain damage.

This was the result of rhesus disease that is a condition where a pregnant woman’s blood actually attacks her unborn baby’s cells and can result in brain damage or death to the infant, however not the pregnant mother. 

Rhesus disease happens when there is a blood mishap or mismatch, when a pregnant woman has rhesus-negative blood for RhD and the unborn baby has rhesus-positive blood RhD from its father. If the mother gets sensitized to this kind of rhesus-positive blood she produces antibodies that cause a blood type reaction that kills red cells and can cause death to the newborn.

Harrison has an antibody in his blood and with the use the antibodies to develop an injection called Anti-D that prevents the blood from developing RhD antibodies during pregnancy and is lifesaving.

Australia was one of the first countries to discover this blood donor with this important anti D antibody.

This Anti-D is credited with saving the lives of more than 2 million babies, according to the Australian Red Cross blood service.    Rho(D) immune globulin is a derivative of human plasma.

About 17% of women are at risk, so he has helped save a lot of lives.  Doctors don not know for sure why Harrison has this rare blood type.   It may be from the transfusions he received when he got blood as a teenager, and for example, he is one of only 50 people in Australia known to have these special kinds of antibodies.  Harrison is a national hero in Australia and he has won many awards after more than one thousand blood donations since he was a youth.  In a pregnancy where the mother is D-negative and the father is D-positive, there is a 50%-100% chance that the unborn child will be D-positive and the mother is therefore at risk for this disease with affects the red cells, it is called D allo-immunization. These women are candidates for this anti D, RhIG prophylaxis, which is what I order as an injection.   Typically I order this test if a women is having a miscarriage and I order a Rh blood type to see if she needs this treatment.