“Here there are few whites and when they arrive and’ even a little’ a party” Ride Yanick Mamadou, the laboratory technician who is coordinating the blood collection in the eighth today “arrondissement”. It's just a moment's pause, in the shade of a mango, a few steps away from children throwing backpacks and a banner written in red and white: “Blood gives’ e’gal vie sauve’e”.

That there are at stake “lives to save” Mamadou explains this by counting the bags of blood already’ filled: seven in an hour, by noon you should arrive at 40. This technician, graduated in Health Sciences, about thirty, he works for the Center national de transfusion sanguine that everyone in Bangui calls “Cnts”.

Beside him is Alessandro Manno, local emergency manager, the NGO that has been supporting the campaign for five years now. “We raise awareness in neighborhoods by explaining why blood donation can’ save lives” says the cooperator. Convinced that however, in the suburbs and poor neighborhoods, to push both hunger and awareness more. “Each donor is given two cans of sardines, with the addition of a loaf of bread and fruit juice” Manno explains: “They are worth approximately 1.600 francs, more or less two and a half euros, not like that’ little in a country where one in four people go hungry”.

To forgive, under the mango, there is the queue. Teens and adults, men and women, who in exchange for a baguette help those who are sick. Finished the collection, the blood bags are transported to the CTNS laboratory. Gabriella Ouango, her hair gathered in a ponytail, is preparing tests for blood work. On average it turns out “positive” one in five bags, for hepatitis b, winter, hepatitis c or syphilis.
The reagents were imported thanks to funding from the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (Aics), which for this year amounts to 365 thousand euros. “An important contribution, which made it possible to relaunch activities’ of Cnts” Manno points out. “When we started, in precarious conditions due to the civil war, we managed to deliver 7,000 bags in one year; in 2019 we plan to reach 20 thousand”.

Blood for transfusions, There is always a more unhappy and more ignored victim, It's free. Children hospitalized at the Complexe Pediatrique or sick with sickle cell disease are also benefited., a form of hereditary anemia that affects the most in the Central African Republic’ than elsewhere. “A transfusion would cost around 4 thousand francs, at least six euros” Lorna Nguilelo confirms, director of a specialized center opened in Bangui a few months ago: “Our patients need it all the time, at least five or six times a year”…

globalist.it

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