A Caye Caulker Resident Needs O-negative Blood

There is a public plea that can make a difference in the quality of life of a thirty-three-year-old man. Damian Alamina is suffering from a condition that causes haemorrhaging. He needs a transfusion of O-negative type blood; if you can help him, you are asked to head over to the Blood Bank adjacent to the Central Medical Lab in Belize City. News Five’s Duane Moody spoke to Alamina today.

Duane Moody, Reporting

A Caye Caulker resident is in urgent need of assistance from the public to undergo a blood transfusion; this is a first step that is required before Damian Alamina can have a medical procedure to determine the nature of his condition. The thirty-three-year-old has been losing a lot of blood when he has need to use the bathroom and doctors have ruled out haemorrhoids. Alamina says that he’s been living with the condition for over a decade.

Damian Alamina, Needs Assistance

“I’ve had a bleeding problem since 2007 and I wasn’t really sure of what it really was at that time, but when I did go to the doctor a few years after that, they always thought it was haemorrhoids, but actually it seems a little bit worse than that.”

Since January of 2019, Alamina’s condition has seemingly worsened and he was hospitalized on several occasions. Most recently, over the Christmas holidays he was hospitalized because his haemoglobin level had dropped significantly. He was treated and released, but re-admitted within days, in early 2020.

Damian Alamina

Damian Alamina

“My blood dropped to three point three and I had to be admitted to the hospital. Once I left, it was at six point seven and just this December it dropped down to three point four and I had to go back to the hospital. It went up to nine units of blood by the twenty-eighth and by the second of this year, January, it dropped to seven point six and by the fourth of this month, it hit five point four. Once my blood gets to about five, I start to get a little bit weaker, sleep a little bit more and I am a little weaker in terms of lifting things. Once it hits the fours or threes, then I can barely come out into the sun without getting weak or dizzy. I can’t lift so much and I can’t do as much work as I would normally be able to do.”

Duane Moody

“So it has prevented you from working, making a living?”

Damian Alamina

“Yes.  I have some family that help and I do have a little part-time job that pays enough for me to eat and whatnot.”

Compounding the issue is that Alamina has the rarest blood type, O-negative; in fact, only seven percent of the world population carries this type of blood. And while genetically he is identified as a universal donor for all blood types, with his condition Alamina can only receive blood from those with O-negative. Today, he makes an appeal to donors of the same blood type to make their way over to the Blood Bank near the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital and donate a unit of blood in his name.

Damian Alamina

“At the moment they can’t do anything unless I get blood donors to build my blood up to eight or nine, probably nine because if I get the colon purge, I will be bleeding every time I go to the bathroom. And it should drop me by one unit and if it is at eight, I can do the colonoscopy to figure out how and where I am bleeding from and then from there, they can figure out how to stop it.”

Duane Moody for News Five.