Blood shortages led to 702 transfusions being postponed between January and October, parliament’s Health Committee heard, as thalassaemia patients described the impact on their health and working lives.
Panayiotis Zezos, a board member of the Pancyprian Thalassaemia Association, said he feared a return to the 1960s and 1970s, when blood shortages meant his parents lost one of their children so that he could survive.
Postponements peaked in January (151) and February (136). There were 81 in March, 42 in April, 16 in May, 35 in June, 15 in July and 26 in August, before the number rose again to 127 in September. There have been 73 so far in October.
Zezos said the incentives under discussion were good, but patients’ reality was different. He described telling his employer every day that he would be absent for a transfusion, only to have to say the same thing the next day because it had been postponed. Patients had to go to work with their haemoglobin at 9, he said. “Who can work with haemoglobin at 9?”
Patients’ messages
Association president Miltos Miltiadous read to the committee messages exchanged between thalassaemia patients. For them, he said, every postponement means another day of waiting, another disruption to their plans and another attempt to carry on with daily life without the transfusion they need.
One woman wrote that for the first time patients were facing postponements over an extended period, which was affecting her family and working life. She said she was struggling to cope and could not perform at work.
Describing patients waiting at the clinic, she wrote: “It becomes chaos in the clinic, 50 of us crammed in for one unit.” Her arms had turned black from the needles, she added.
Another patient described a transfusion day in Nicosia. Very little blood was available until 3pm, he said, and most of it arrived later. His own transfusion began after 4pm, while the clinic was crowded.
Two patients developed arrhythmias and tachycardia, and one was taken by ambulance to the general hospital, he said.
Describing the pressure on nursing staff, he said he hoped no mistakes would be made, and called the problem systemic.
Patients also asked to be given written confirmation when a transfusion is postponed because of a lack of blood, so they do not have to keep justifying themselves at work. “I want a piece of paper for my dignity,” one wrote, adding that he would not accept his colleagues always having to cover for him.
The patients stressed that they were not asking for blood to be withheld from anyone who needed it urgently, only that they should not be left without their own treatment.
