People with gold in their veins

Priti Mahabalirsquos umbilical cord had wrapped around her first babyrsquos neck in the womb The doctors of Belapurrsquos MGM Hospital discovered this shortly before she was to go in for delivery With normal labour ruled out theyrsquod have to go for a Caesarean section Transfusion bottles of O blood which Priti had declared as her blood type would be neededHer husband Ashish was despatched with a sample of her blood to get crossmatched at a lab Thatrsquos when the nightmare started Pritirsquos blood did not crossmatch with any of the O blood available She was clearly not an O or any other known blood typeIt was January 15 2007 Ashish called Anil Gare a social worker at Nair Hospital whose mobile number he had fortuitously stored Anil organised blood camps among other activities and advised Ashish to contact the Indian Council for Medical Research ICMR right awayThe ICMR thought Priti might have a rare blood type known as Bombay Blood They knew of a donor but only had his name and village Mahul in Thane Ashish growing desperate by now went knocking from door to door in Mahul to find someone who knew that donor With evening approaching and time running out he called Anil Gare againldquoMaybe you should speak to Vinay Shettyrdquo said AnilThatrsquos the moment everything changed Vinay is a curious man passionately devoted to finding blood for other people The Lifeblood Council which he runs is dedicated to the prevention care and cure of thalassemia major patientsmdashand maintains a registry of Bombay Blood donors His spreadsheet has 560 names carefully compiled over decades though not all of them are donors and not all are traceable now Other states have additional Bombay Blood donors on their listsTo Ashishrsquos relief Vinay knew a Bombay Blood donor Santosh Waradekar And yes he could get him from Goregaon to the Belapur hospital No they should only draw his blood if it became necessary Bombay Blood is precious like goldPriti Mahabalirsquos first child was born safely on January 17 No transfusion was necessary but the Bombay Blood donor stood by patiently as long as they needed him toVanishingly few people in the world have Bombay Blood one of the worldrsquos rarest blood groups It is frequently misclassified as O which it mimics It was identified in 1951 by Dr Y M Bhende in the blood of a patient admitted to KEM Hospital after a railway accident His blood lacked the H antigen a kind of protein that red blood cells carry on their surface His blood also carried a thitherto undocumented antibody that wreaked havoc on other blood groups like O A or B The only blood his body could accept was from someone with his own rare bloodIn a paper in The Lancet in 1952 Dr Bhende proposed that Ohmdashbetter known as Bombay Blood after the city where it was discoveredmdashshould be recognised as a rare blood groupOne in 10000 people in the Indian subcontinent have Bombay Blood we are told and one in a million in the western world Such numbers can convey a false sense of precision and security The truth is that you cannot have a denominator without a census and no one has ever done a count of this rare communityTwo Sundays ago however I sat in a room in Pune with about 30 people from a mosaic of backgrounds ages and communities who all had one thing in commonmdashthey were all Bombay Blood donors They stand together in the group photo above precious strangers united by bloodOne of them an IT engineer in his 30s called Kashif had discovered only days earlier that he had Bombay Blood when he went for a renal procedure There was a 21yearold lad called Luksh Uchil studying industrial design at the University of Toronto visiting India on vacation Being Oh negative he can only accept Oh negative and could be in a crisis far from home if he needed emergency Bombay Blood and had not cryogenically frozen his own blood called autology in a Canadian blood bankA father who had discovered that he had Bombay Blood had brought his toddler for a blood test perhaps he was a Bombay Blood babyHaving Bombay Blood makes a human being unexpectedly golden born to save some strangerrsquos life one day Vinay Shetty receives calls from distant cities and countries urgent appeals for Bombay Blood Not long ago he arranged flights for two Bombay Blood donors to travel to Hanoi for a baby born with Bombay Blood Thankfully the donation became unnecessaryldquoThey are special peoplerdquo said Ashish Pritirsquos husband ldquoMy wifersquos donor travelled from Goregaon at his own cost He waited without complaining as long as we wanted He never asked for any compensation He just stood ready to giverdquoIf you think or know that you have Bombay Blood or know someone who does contact ICMR and let them know so that you are included in the national rare blood registry that they are compilingIf you have trouble getting through to them call Vinay Shetty 98201 46448 Hersquoll know what to doYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper