Animal Blood Donors Sri Lanka:Saving lives
Four legged friends helping each other is the core initiative behind the Animal Blood Donors Sri Lanka initiative begun by Yannina Captain , the director of Justice for Animals organization, who created a platform that would enable blood donation for dogs.
The idea of an animal blood donation campaign dawned after coming across a facebook post requesting for blood to save a sick dog, however by the time she responded the dog had passed away. “I was quite sad to think that perhaps if I, or someone else had seen the post sooner, the dog may have been saved. That’s when I realized there was a lack of cohesive administration when it comes to animal blood donations and in the organization of animal blood products,” said Yannina. As true as these words are, currently veterinary clinics in the country are handicapped in the face of emergencies for blood donation.
Yannina has begun an Animal Blood Donation Project by creating a platform on Facebook named @animalblooddonorssrilanka purely for the purpose of creating a registry for animal blood donors so that in cases of an emergency, a vet or owner is able to match a donor on the registrar to the recipient in need as soon as possible. The group members are capable of registering a suitable applicant animal by messaging the group admin.
As shared by Yannina, animals require blood transfusion similar to humans due to health risks such as anaemia, blood clotting disorders, blood cancers or autoimmune disease, accidents and injuries. As recalled by her once her own dog Bella and another dog named Ralpael saved several lives by donating blood. Her organization transfused blood to two puppies, Daisy and Duke who were diagnosed with Tick fever, Parvo and Mange and where her own dog,Bella helped to create antibody serum. This helped one puppy survive despite having very low survival rate yet although the other puppy was not so lucky. As Yannina says like everything else, blood donation can’t always guarantee survival.
However like humans there are certain eligibility criterias for animals to be entitled to be donor. The Dogs must be in good health and have normal temperature, heart rate and respiration,they must be between one and eight years old, their weight should be more than 25kg,they should have a good temperament, they must be vaccinated or have an annual titre test after the first year booster and they should not be on any medication. She also strongly advises to refrain dogs who might find donation procedure stressful and scary to be cited for donations.
Currently this project is at its infancy and handled many challenges despite the limited funds and staff, together with the challenges that the Covid-19 backdrop imposes on all of us.Justice for Animals focal objective is to on preventing as opposed to reacting to a medical emergency. They hope to expand the animal blood donation registrar with hope to save more lives, by spreading awareness and re-educate pet owners, especially those who think that blood donation is dangerous for the donors. Currently their biggest challenges is the lack of donors to match the requests for blood donations forwarded to them. They hope the altruistic animal loving community of Sri Lanka will join hands with them to contribute and save more lives so that no animal’s life will ever be left to chance.