HOUSE OF THE WEEK
Warm single-storey house in Thingangyun
UNCOMPLICATED suburban living sums up this single-level house in Thingangyun township. The house is not overly spacious but there is a nice garden and lawn as compensation. more
Monks donate blood to needy patients
(Volume 26, No. 510)
IT is midnight and the telephone is ringing in the compound of Ywar Ma Pariyati Sarthindeik monastic school. A young monk picks up the phone, on the other end a woman beseeches him to find a monk who is willing to donate blood to her sick relative. This is not a one-off, but a daily occurrence.
Without hesitating, the monk goes from house to house in the compound to find a monk with the required blood type who is willing to go to the hospital and donate blood.
“Blood is life,” says Ashin Kinsana, a monk who lectures at the school in Ywar Ma, Yangon, which is dedicated to Buddhist literature. Spread across seven acres, the school, which is one of the largest in Insein township, is home to 330 monks of which 150 are adult. This makes it a valuable source of blood for the local hospital.
“Relatives of patients have been sent to find a donor here,” said Ashin Kinsana, “since 1970 when the school was founded monks have donated their blood when asked.
“A number of people who come to ask for blood are hard-up. They bring the monk to the hospital and when they arrive there they cannot even afford to buy a blood bag and syringe so the monk sometimes bears the expense.”
There are only three monks in the school who have AB type blood, the rest have A, B and O respectively. A record is kept of the donor, type of blood and date of each donation. However, sometimes people are disappointed when they arrive at the monastery and a monk with the required blood type is not there.
“There have been difficult situations at times when all the donors have recently given blood so were unable to donate further and had to refuse,” said Ashin Nyar Naw Bartha, 22, who has donated blood three times.
To solve this problem the monks also help donors locate monks in nearby monasteries and collect money to help cover patient medical costs too.
“We cannot donate money to every patient but we try and help the really hard-up if we can,” said Ashin Kinsana. On average the school sees at least one relative of a sick person each day, although sometimes four or five relatives turn up at the school.
The monks are happy to donate their blood with no anticipation of reward although those who can afford it often return to donate foodstuffs.
