A Little-Known Charity

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 18

A Little-Known Charity

Unobtrusively, the North Canterbury Blood Transfusion Service has completed 29 years of service to the injured and sick in Christchurch. Its activities nominally cover the whole of the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s area—many of the donors live 50 miles from Christchurch—but the blood stored in Christchurch is available if a sudden call is made on the blood banks of other centres. On occasion, North Canterbury bicod has been sent overseas. The service is an association of voluntary blood donors—73B3 of them, at the latest count, or about one from every twelfth household in the board’s area. All but a thousand of these donors gave blood last year, some of them four times; several have made more than 90 donations over the years. Most of the donors are Christchurch residents who go to the Christchurch Public Hospital to be bled; but country districts visited by the service’s mobile unit have more than pulled their weight: nearly 30 per cent of the blood taken last year came through the mobile unit.

Service organisations, notably the Order of St. John, the Red Cross Society, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce, help to enrol, muster, and look after donors. The medical fraternity and the hospital generously acknowledge the value of the service provided. The board’s haemotologist, Dr. F. W. Gunz, is a world figure in his field. The blood transfusion service is so little known that it might be said to do its good work by stealth. It is, nevertheless, one of Canterbury’s more notable institutions.