A Tribute to the Social Workers

First October of every year is the "World Blood donation Day". On this occassion, we feel proud to feature two young men of Coimbatore, who are doing great job silently.

Kaushik and Sriram, (picture above) residents of Coimbatore (Tamilnadu, India) have silently arranged more than 30,000 units of blood to the needy patients at Coimbatore in the past two years. Recently I had the opportunity of meeting them at Coimbatore and they were introduced to me by J Prabhakar (another social worker about whom, i will write in detail later). 

Kaushik and Sriram have a list of more than 3000 quality donors from Coimbatore of all the blood groups and they are constantly updating the list. Besides, many college students are also supporting them in their endeavours. Beides, they also have the list of donars from Chennai and Erode (approximately 1500). You will be surprised to know that the entire database is stored in their mobile phone with the name of donors, contact number, blood group, when they last donated, etc. Sriram says, "We are using the mobile phone as our laptop".

They start receiving the calls right from the morning, requesting for a voluntary donor of a particular blood group. Within five minutes, they are able to locate the donor and link the donor and the patient. "When the people are in difficulty and in need of a quality blood, we try to help them by arraging for the required blood group donor. We never charge even a rupee. In fact, we spend our money to link them. On many occassions, we have arranged rare blood groups from our list even in the midnights during emergencies", says humbly Kaushik.

Every Hospital in Coimbatore have displayed the names of Kaushik and Sriram in their boards as contact for blood needs. On an average, they arrange 25 to 30 units of blood every day to various patients in different hosptals.

Kaushik is presently working as para medical staff in Ramakrishna hospital. Two years back, he donated his blood to one of the patients in the hospital where he was working. When he came out, one old lady requested him whether he could help to get a donor for particular group of blood, for an emergency patient. Since, he knew that a particular friend was having that blood group, he immediately arranged for the donor. On seeing this, another old patient, on the next day, requested Kaushik whether he could help him also with a donor. Again, he arranged for the donor within few minutes. 

"The smile and sense of satisfaction on the face of the two elderly patients gave me an inspiration. I could bring happiness to two people, just with two phone calls to my friends. I thought, why should I not gather some more database of blood group of my friends and motivate them to donate blood. I started doing in a small way, for the needy patients. It gave me a sense of satisfaction and happiness", Kaushik says with emotion and tears in his eyes.

within two weeks, Kaushik met Sriram, who came to the hospital to donate his blood to one of his friends. Kaushik and Sriram shared the same feeling when they met each other. Slowly, their friendship developed and they started collecting database from their contacts. They started helping the patients by linking them with quality donors, under the name "Any Time Blood" (ATB). Now ATB has become a popular name amongst all hospitals at Coimbatore.

Sriram is doing a small business. Still he finds happiness in arranging for the blood donors for the needy patients at coimbatore. On seeing their commitment, some of the patients and their famiy members started enrolling themselves as blood donors with them. Kaushik and Sriram keep in touch with donors regularly through SMS and also over phone. 

At Coimbatore alone, they have networked more than 3000 committed blood donors, who also bring in their friends in this network. 

" hardly 5% of the people call back and thank us for our timely support and volunteer to join this network. Most of the others, just return home even without saying a thanks to us. For getting the blood donor, they used to contact us many times, even while we try to arrange the donor. The moment, the job is done, they may not even call back to confirm this. Many times, we will get the information either from the hospital or from the donors themselves. " says Sriram sadly. "That does not prevent us from this task. Whether somebody recognises us or not, we continue to help the patients at their critical time" says Sriram proudly with a sense of satisfaction.

Appeal

If any of the readers or their friends , particularly from Tamilnadu, are interested to be a blood donor, please send SMS to Kaushik or Sriram over mobile 98943 95495 or 98431 93014 furnishing (1) name, (2) town and (3) the blood group details. They will enroll in their list and they would get in touch with them, in case of need. They should comply with the eligibility of blood donation, healthwise. Or the readers can also send mail to anytimeblood@gmail.com with the above details.