Freelance blood sellers fill shortfall in Cambodian health system

Jul 15, 2011, 3:26 GMT

Phnom Penh - Cambodian street children are selling blood outside hospitals because of a shortfall in the fluid available for transfusions, local media reported Friday.

A lack of official blood donations has led to a rise in freelance 'blood sellers,' the Cambodia Daily newspaper said.

'Older street children ... are selling blood sometimes, including drug users,' said Man Phally, programme coordinator for the local organization Mith Samlanh, which works with street children.

'They mostly hang around the hospitals, and if people need blood, they'll buy from them,' he was quoted as saying.

Man Phally told the newspaper that many Cambodians believed giving blood made them weak, meaning that the country's ill-equipped hospitals were constantly running short.

To compensate, beleaguered doctors encouraged patients' relatives to seek blood outside hospitals, where off-the-street donors can make an estimated 5 to 10 dollars per donation, a large amount in a country where the per-capita gross domestic product totalled 783 dollars in 2010, according to US State Department figures.

The report came as Prime Minister Hun Sen appealed Thursday to students to donate blood, noting that just three in 1,000 people were donors.

'Blood is worth more than money,' Hun Sen said. 'Money can be used to buy stuff, but blood is used to save human lives.'

Meuk Samean, deputy director of the Ministry of Health's National Blood Transfusion Centre, was quoted as saying the centre had just 500 bags of blood in reserve but used up around 100 per day.

'We need more blood donors so that we can ... eliminate blood selling,' she said.