22nd July 2003
James Harrison holds the record world-wide for the greatest number of blood donations given in a lifetime. He has given over 500 donations in four decades. He lives in Australia.
When he was a teenager he had a major lung operation and received a blood transfusion which he reckoned saved his life. He decided that when he was eighteen he would give blood himself to repay the donation he had received.
Mr Harrison now gives blood on a fortnightly basis. His job obliges him to travel all over Australia and he gives blood wherever he is. From these donations only the plasma is kept, the red cells being returned to him. The plasma is used to make Anti-D for women who are Rhesus negative but give birth to a Rhesus positive child. There are only 130 people in all Australia who's blood is used to make Anti-D.
About a year ago in the Kenyan Parliament there were objections to the attire of some members. They were not in western suits but in African dress.
Twenty Kenyan designers of African dress challenged the criticisms. What were suitable clothes for Kenyans to wear in their Parliament? Why, they asked, should people wear the clothes of their former colonial masters?
Well, the designers words fell on fertile soil and in the recent elections on the hustings nearly all candidates wore their native local clothes. This has continued in Parliament when they were elected.
Well done to the Kenyan designers - as well as saving the authentic dress of their own country they saved their jobs.
Now, where do I find out such useful pieces of information? The BBC World Service, of course.
Usually I sleep well but if I do wake up the BBC World Service induces sleep again very rapidly. I would recommend it to anyone, way ahead of Mogadon.
But sometimes the hard news parts are very bitter indeed. There appears to be war everywhere. Liberians, whose country has a long connection with the United States of America, having been founded by it when freed slaves were returned there over 150 years ago, are begging President George Bush to send over American troops but he prefers to send them almost anywhere else. The rebel soldiers there are frequently described as being about twelve to sixteen and often high on cannabis, but armed with sophisticated weapons.
In the Congo, there is tribal fighting with much less modern but equally lethal weapons which leaves hundreds dead every day. There is much criticism of the neighbouring countries who seem to be involved in the hostilities. The Congo's diamonds are acting like magnets it seems.
Many other parts of Africa feature on the bulletins too. Children are abducted from Northern Uganda to serve as sex slaves if girls, or child soldiers if boys. But on to South America and the FARC guerrillas, the Middle East and the suicide bombers, deaths in all places reported in dozens or more. There is trouble even in the Solomon islands, which should be a paradise of peace.
There has been a change in the reporting from Iraq since President Bush said the war there was over. American soldiers are still killed on a daily basis, but initially this was the first item on the news - now the deaths may only be the third or fourth item. It's hard to hold the headlines in a world of war.
We know how many Americans and British soldiers have been killed but have no notion how many Iraqi civilians, not to mind soldiers, have perished. Nor do we know how many are dying of disease. Some lives have more value in the news than others. It is considered wrong to show the dead bodies of coalition soldiers but all right if they are Iraqi civilians or better still Saddam's sons. I do hope his grandson was left out of the local photographs. It would be extremely upsetting for his schoolmates to see him.
One single death held its place in the news for quite some time - that was the suicide of the scientist David Kelly, who had been embroiled in the fight between No. 10 Downing Street and the BBC over the claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction on all of us in forty five minutes. That death has even sparked an investigation by a Law Lord.
What did listeners in the back of Ghana make of this dispute? What did they think of it in Uzbekistan? In Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula? No land, no water, no gold, no diamonds not even oil involved. Just reputations. And Dr. Kelly was so far from "seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth". Such a stupid fight. The weapons were just words but a death ensued.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
