On World Blood Donor Day..
Today is the official World Blood Donor Day, which is inspiring enough, so i decided to grab my sweet people: Katherine from Hong Kong and Ollie the Aussie Brother and go check how is the blood donation in Hong Kong for foreigners is happening in this special day.
First we went to the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Blood Center but we got no welcome there at all. There was no one there to welcome us. We got surprised by the GHOSTED, PERFECTLY EMPTY clinics building despite of they told me a few days before that “Sure, you can come on Sunday, sure, it will be the special World Blood Donor Day, so we may be crowded, but you just dress in red and you even will get some gifts!” Yeah, i took my only one red t-shirt but we got no gift, but got surprised FOR SURE……….. At least we managed to shoot some reasonable Rock N Roll photos in the stunning campus park. YO! No destination without Purpose! XD
Okay.. let’s try Causeway Bay then..
Straight after that we headed into the Hong Kong Causeway Bay Blood Donation Center to give the second chance. We arrived around noon and it was packed with filipino, other indonesian and local people, which was quite elevating to see!
After i filled out the forms, we waited around 30-40 minutes to get to the blood check table, had a brief basic fun chat with the nurse about blood donating in other countries (she asked: “is there this kind of blood check before donating in your country too?”… 🙂 for that moment i felt like Europe is kinda slipping down straight back to the ‘Third World category. 😛 )
After it followed by another waiting period i got into the doctor’s check-room, where she suddenly realized that i am not allowed to donate blood because the fact that i spent more than 5 cumulative years in Europe. According to the fear of “Mad-Cow” disease or SARS, etc. can hit back again, Hong Kong and some other countries adopted the Overseas Travel Deferral Criteria to try to protect their patient population from infections. Then NO ONE can donate blood in Hong Kong SAR who “meet” this ‘5 year Europe’ criteria. That’s sad, BUT i can respect, since they face enough challenges to keep Hong Kong out of any epidemic breakout. The rate of the precaution cannot be high enough.
Summary of the day:
If i want to keep my Blooderhood project running on track, i need to find another country nearby where i allowed to donate or just need to fly back to Hungary every 2 month to donate it, ahaha.. At least i should get the Hungarian Red Cross organization as a sponsor for that.. 😛
