Bulgaria: when you have no choice but the “blood mafia” | News and analysis from Bulgaria | DW
In life there are events that pierce like an electric shock, shatter your entire little universe. They turn her upside down. They force you to rethink everything.
At the beginning of August this year, I found out that my loved one urgently needed to undergo a major operation. He would lose a lot of blood with her. In order for the hospital to accept the blood transfusion, we were required to provide notes that two people had donated blood in his name. They explained to us that this was to replenish the blood bank of Sofia – a standard practice in these cases in the country.
There has been a shortage of blood in Bulgaria for years
We meet the conditions for a blood donor, described on the page of the National Center for Transfusion Hematology (NCTH). The point was to find a second person to help. However, this turns out to be a very tedious task in the midst of summer vacations. Some people were in the country, others did not meet the criteria (were over 65 years of age or had a recent illness, etc.). Along with the anxieties of the sudden, crushing news of success, the inability to find a blood donor added to the tension.
There has been a shortage of blood in Bulgaria for years. The harsh “laws of the market” dictate that where there is demand, there is supply. I found out from acquaintances that people “hang around” (as they say) around the blood donation points, who provide yours for a fee. Most are from the minorities – mainly Roma. The trade in the precious liquid is in the hands of what some call the “blood mafia”.
The street offering of blood, which meets desperate people, has been going on for years in Sofia, as well as in many other places in Bulgaria, they are acting idly.
My initial reaction was not to look for a second blood donor “that way”. However, the grains of time were flying faster and faster, and efforts to find a relative or friend to respond were fruitless. Added to this is the abyss of bureaucratic chaos, whose gaping maw was opening ever wider.
Life in Bulgaria has taught me to distrust the “information about citizens” published on the websites of state government bodies or on sealed sheets taped to their viper corridors.
Instinct didn’t lie to me.
On the website of the NCTH with the indicated places where one can donate blood. What is not said is that, for example, if you donate blood at the Military Medical Academy (MMA), it can only be used for a patient who is lying in the MMA. Not for one in another medical facility, as was our case.
I found this out at the VMA itself. Good thing I asked. Otherwise, my blood would be taken without helping my loved one.
On the other hand, the doctor at the VMA is very kind, extra-personal, responsive. The doctors at NCTH, where I went next, were also wonderful. That is, the picture is not monochromatic, monotonous.
On my way back from the National Technical University, a few meters from the institution – on Bratya Miladinovi Street, I was stopped several times by potential blood donors. They see my bandaged post-hand manipulation and offer to help for a fee.
I settled with one of them, exchanged phones. Blood donation was done. After an hour they called me: the note is ready!
My heart pounded madly in the August haze. What if the document is fake? Or if they beat me up, in the small, dark streets, around the “Lion Bridge”? With what eyes – heavy, ashamed – would I stand before my dying loved one?
The meeting with the two men who gave me the document was quick, thirty meters away from the pretending to be sleeping patrol car.
To me he is a savior, not a criminal
A few months later, I can say with relief: everything is fine! My dear, close person is alive thanks to this street blood donor. He is a savior. Not a criminal. Somewhere in someone’s veins, his life-giving blood is probably already flowing.
Now I feel like joking: what if the beneficiary is one of those who tattooed images of Botev and Levski on their chests and biceps? The same ones who sound the alarm like “the Roma will melt us”. How would such a “patriot” be shocked if he learned that the “blood mafia” had saved him and the Bulgarian state had abandoned him?