Trimester: A 3-month time in pregnancy. Rh Immunoglobulin (RhIg): A substance given to prevent an Rh-negative person’s antibody response to Rh-positive blood cells. More people are Rh positive than Rh negative, so it is considered Rh Factor: A protein that can be found on the surface of red blood cells. If you do not have this protein, then you have Rh negative blood. There are four blood types and a protein, called the Rh factor, which provide these influences. Although your blood type doesnt drive your personality, people with certain blood types do tend to have certain personality traits that are not found in others.But when she read the details closely, her eyes widened. For whatever reason, its called the Rh factor.The nurse in Annemasse, France, could tell from the label on the blood bag destined for Paris that this blood was pretty unusual. Wiener, when they observed that an injection of blood from a rhesus monkey into rabbits caused an antigenic reaction in the serum component of rabbit blood (see immunity immunity,Then, in a different group, theres the Rhesus D antigen, which gives us all the positive/negative stuff. The Rh, or rhesus, factor was discovered in 1940 by K. It was quicker that way: If the man donated in Switzerland, his blood would be delayed while paperwork was filled out and authorizations sought.Rh factor, protein substance present in the red blood cells of most people, capable of inducing intense antigenic reactions.Hence the hundreds of millions of people flowing through blood-donation centers across the world, and the thousands of vehicles transporting bags of blood to processing centers and hospitals.It would be straightforward if we all had the same blood. If we lose a lot of blood in surgery or an accident, we need more of it—fast. In 50 years, researchers have turned up only 40 or so other people on the planet with the same precious, lifesaving blood in their veins.Red blood cells carry oxygen to all the cells and tissues in our body. Very few people in the world knew his blood type did—could—exist.These transfusion reactions can be lethal.Because so few people have it, by definition, rare blood is hardly ever needed. If you receive blood from a “positive” donor, then your own antibodies may react with the incompatible donor blood cells, triggering a further response from the immune system. If you lack one that 99.99 percent of people are positive for, then you have very rare blood.If a particular high-prevalence antigen is missing from your red blood cells, then you are “negative” for that blood group. If you lack an antigen that 99 percent of people in the world are positive for, then your blood is considered rare. Some 160 of the 342 blood-group antigens are “high-prevalence,” which means that they are found on the red blood cells of most people. It is the presence or absence of particular antigens that determines someone’s blood type.
If this suspicion proved correct, it would make his blood type Rh null—one of the rarest in the world, and a phenomenal discovery for the hospital hematologists.Rh null blood was first described in 1961, in an Aboriginal Australian woman. But Thomas seemed to be lacking all the Rh antigens. The Rh system (formerly known as “Rhesus”) is the largest, containing 61 antigens.The most important of these Rh antigens, the D antigen, is quite often missing in Caucasians, of whom around 15 percent are Rh D-negative (more commonly, though inaccurately, known as Rh-negative blood). The majority of the 342 blood-group antigens belong to one of these systems. It will almost certainly involve a convoluted international network of people working invisibly behind the bustle of “ordinary” blood donation to track down a donor in one country and fly a bag of their blood to another.Forty years ago, when 10-year-old Thomas went into the University Hospital of Geneva with a routine childhood infection, his blood test revealed something very curious: He appeared to be missing an entire blood-group system.There are 35 blood-group systems, organized according to the genes that carry the information to produce the antigens within each system. So the next step for the hematologists in Geneva was to test Thomas’s family in the hope of finding another source, particularly as Thomas wouldn’t be able to donate until he turned 18. Thierry Peyrard, the current director of the National Immunohematology Reference Laboratory in Paris.Blood groups are inherited, and Rh null is known to run in families. “It’s the golden blood,” says Dr. As such, it’s also highly prized by doctors—although it will be given to patients in only extreme circumstances, and after very careful consideration, because it may be nigh on impossible to replace. Rare negative blood is so sought after for research that even though all samples stored in blood banks are anonymized, there have been cases where scientists have tried to track down and approach individual donors directly to ask for blood.And because Rh null blood can be considered “universal” blood for anyone with rare blood types within the Rh system, its lifesaving capability is enormous. Akata enclosed his mother’s medical records, asking for Walter’s help.Walter, a consultant at Johnson City Medical Center, in Tennessee, knew from the start this wasn’t going to be easy. Father Gerald Anietie Akata’s 70-year-old mother had a tumor in her heart, but no hospital in Nigeria could perform the surgery she needed. Pure chance, twice over, in the face of vanishingly small odds.In 2013, Walter Udoeyop received a letter from an old friend back in Nigeria. But the tests showed Thomas’s Rh null blood was due to two completely different random mutations on both sides. Father Akata’s parishioners in the U.S. He phoned the hospital there, and the staff agreed to operate on Francisca. But neither could raise such a large amount of money.He recalled that another friend had recently had open-heart surgery in the United Arab Emirates for only $20,000. Father Akata had been a pastor in Johnson City for several years, and Walter initially hoped to enlist the help of the church and hospitals his friend had served in. He tried blood center after blood center across the country before he was referred to the American Rare Donor Program in Philadelphia, a database of all rare-blood donors in America. The hospital searched for blood but couldn’t find any in the two weeks that followed.Walter requested Francisca’s blood tests from the hospital and then began the search for compatible blood in the U.S. Akata had to fly back home and wait until matching blood was found. The combination made Francisca’s blood so rare that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a match for her.Because there was no compatible blood in the UAE or any of the other Gulf States, Mrs. To complicate the matter, she was also O-negative—the uncommon, but not officially rare, blood type that many of us have heard of, shared by about 5 percent of people. WuBut a few days after her admission, the doctors told Francisca that blood tests had revealed that she had a rare blood type, shared by 0.2 percent of the white population: Lutheran B-negative. It’s not a TV set it’s not a car. “Your patient is dying, and you have people in an office asking for this paper and that form. “You would not imagine how difficult it is when you have to import or export rare blood,” Peyrard says. There are limits placed on how often people can donate. These are all common problems with rare donors. Walter got in touch with the surgeons there, who confirmed that they could do the surgery if he could supply compatible blood.The American Rare Donor Program contacted the South African National Blood Service, which had four suitable donors listed however, one of these was unreachable, one wasn’t able to donate until later in the year, and two had been medically retired from donating. But then, after a chance meeting with a colleague, Father Akata found out about a small general hospital in Cameroon, Nigeria’s neighbor to the east, that had set up a heart-surgery program with funding from the Catholic Church. As Walter now discovered, the hospital in the UAE had a policy not to accept blood donations from outside the Gulf States, which meant that Francisca wouldn’t be able to use the blood he had found in America.The situation looked bleak. Chaplet of divine mercy pamphletWalter was running out of options.When he turned 18, Thomas was encouraged to donate blood for himself. To use the frozen South African blood, Francisca would have to have her operation in South Africa. If it got held up at customs, or delayed for any other reason, it would be unusable by the time it reached the hospital in Cameroon.
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