BLOOD TRANSFUSION SERVICE

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 11 June 1932, Page 11

BLOOD TRANSFUSION SERVICE

fi'Ht Arthur Stanley, chairman of the British Bed Cross Society, speaking at a social meeting of the Bed Cross Blood Transfusion Service in .London on April 9, said the story of the service was one of steady arid consistent progress. Sir Arthur was told that up to the present nearly 10,000 calls had been received, and each year showed an increase on the year before. Up to the previous, week 553 calls had been received since the beginnng of the year. For the corresponding period of 1931 the number was 456, and for 1930, 389. Tlie first man, Mr. A. P. Leslie, of Clapton, to give forty blood transfusions was presented with a bar po his medal; and the first woman, Nurse V. E. ’Smith, of Tooting, to attain twenty blood transfusions was also presented with a bar to her medal. In making the presentations Sir

Calls to Nearly Ten Thousand Cases

Arthur congratulated all concerned with the service on the valuable work they were doing. “I do not wapt to describe blood donors as heroes, he said, “for I am assured by my friends in the medical profession that a little blood-letting now and then, as was a habit a century or two ago, has a real tonic effect. At the same time, whether it is good for them or .not, I think we must recognise the social service these men and women are doing who have volunteered to give their blood," not for the sake of their own kith and kin, but for utter strangers. “The Blood Transfusion Service, I am glad to see, is a really up-to-date bodv. The value of the work of the Blood Transfusion Service is now recognised by the Medical Research Council, and we now have a medical officer at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital for testing and classifying prospective volunteers.”