The rarest blood called Bombay blood group, donated by four Indians has saved a Bangladeshi from certain death.
Had it not been detected that Mohammed Kamruzzaman had the rare Bombay blood group in the first place, it would have been very difficult to save him.
“Perhaps many patients had died earlier for the improper diagnosis of blood group,” said Dr O F G Kibria after conducting a surgery on Kamruzzaman at the Apollo Hospitals in Dhaka on Monday.
According to him, Kamruzzaman is the first person in Bangladesh with the Bombay blood group.
On May 21, Kamruzzaman, a factory worker, was injured in a traffic accident. A hand and a leg of the worker were broken badly and his pelvis was displaced.
Kamruzzaman’s colleague Tuhinur Alam, who had been attending on him from the beginning, knocked the doors of several large hospitals in the capital but none could find out why they could not match his blood with another’s.
The peculiarity of Bombay blood group is that it does not express the H antigen. As a result, it cannot form A antigens or B antigens on red blood cells. Thus people with this group can donate blood to anybody with ABO grouping but can receive blood only from the Bombay blood group people, according to medical experts.
Alam said Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University later discovered that Kamruzzaman had the rare Bombay blood group.
“His haemoglobin level dropped very low,” Alam said, adding that they could not transfuse blood as no-one’s blood was a match to his.
After discovering his blood group, a frantic online and offline search led Kamruzzaman’s colleague to Vinay Shetty of the Mumbai-based NGO Think Foundation.
Alam reached Mumbai to collect the blood donated by Swapna Sawant, Krishnanand Kori, Mehul Bhelekar and Pravin Shinde.
In India, where a robust blood distribution network exists, less than 400 people are known to have the Bombay blood group, a few of whom were donors.
Kamruzzaman, who is the fifth among six brothers, hails from Noakhali district. “How would I ever repay my debt to them,” he said.