Blood donations are often done right on the sidewalks, in front of hospitals.
She was conducting a blood donation camp at a hospital. Sanu had volunteered at NHS for 10 years, at the care center, helping the children, and consoling the young men in pain. The story that saddened them and me the most was of Sanu Maiya Kapali, mother of a child with hemophilia.
The tally of destruction of the hemophilia community was sobering: out of their known 500 members, 63 homes collapsed. There were 15 other earthquakes, and a recorded 386 aftershocks as of September 2, 2015, including one during my visit, that very night. More than three-quarters of the buildings in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, were uninhabitable or unsafe. Continued aftershocks occurred throughout Nepal at intervals of 15–20 minutes, with one shock reaching a magnitude of 6.7 on 26 April.Įventually everyone, including hemophilia families, lived in tents supplied by the government and relief agencies for months. More than 9,000 people were killed, and more than 23,000 injured. For 50 some minutes-an eternity for an earthquake-homes crumbled, buildings collapsed, people were crushed. On Saturday, April 25, at noon, the tectonic plates under the Himalaya shifted, triggering a massive earthquake registering 7.9 on the Richter scale. I wanted to hear their story and assess their needs. I was curious to know how it affected them what had happened. My third visit was just six months after the devastating earthquake of April 25, 2015. My gut instinct proved correct: they have implemented the program to perfection. I believed in the staff, and trusted them. I had first visited Nepal in 19, and saw the dedication and hard work of the then newly born Nepal Hemophilia Society. Nepal is Save One Life’s second partner country. Hepson ran his own small business, got married and had children. He stayed in hospital for six months.īut nothing stopped him. He lost a lot of blood and after every two days received a blood transfusion of around 26 units. After an assessment from the doctors, it was agreed that the leg would be amputated. In 1993, his knee swelled for almost three months with extreme pain and no medical prescriptions. Never formally educated, he trained as an electronics repair man in 1983, repairing televisions and radios that had been his source of livelihood ever since. He had a stroke suddenly, and the brain bleed that followed killed him. Hemophilia claimed him at last, at age 61. But his daughter and brother emailed me this morning to say he was gone. I was planning to see Hepson in July, when I would return to Kilimanjaro, and bring him a ton of factor and supplies. Then, I met him later on in Arusha, Tanzania, where he lives, and where you can access Mt. I first met him in Kenya, where he was seeking treatment. I’ve written about Hepson before in HemaBlog, and we just published an essay of his in March. So it was very surprising to meet a man who never had factor and was doing great into his 50s-Hepson Minja of Tanzania. People did not live long with untreated bleeds.
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