This year's World Blood Donor Day will be held under the slogan “Share your life, give blood”. It is especially relevant for Ukraine: after the start of the full-scale invasion of Russia, the need for donated blood has increased many times over. Now, blood saves lives not only of sick children and adults, but also of Ukrainian soldiers who have stood up to defend their homeland. To be more precise, it is not the blood that saves lives, but the donors who share it with those who are on the verge of life and death. Kyiv Polytechnic introduces one of these people who are not indifferent to other people's misfortunes to its readers. Or, rather, it reveals to them another side of his personality, because the name of Vitaliy Tatarchuk, head of the research department of KPI history at the Borys Paton State Polytechnic Museum, is well known to many students and staff of the university. But he is known to them as an expert on the KPI's past and one of the best aviation history specialists in Kyiv. However, not everyone knows that he has been a donor for many years. So he told KP editor-in-chief Dmytro Stefanovych about this side of his life, why he decided to become a donor, and how the life of a donor differs from the life of an ordinary person. The conversation began with congratulations, as in late April Vitaliy Tatarchuk was awarded the title of Honorary Donor of Ukraine.
- “Congratulations on being awarded the title of ‘Honorary Donor of Ukraine’! Not all donors receive this honor. How many times have you donated blood?
- 40 times. When I was collecting documents in March to apply for this title, at Okhmatdyt (National Children's Specialized Hospital of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, editor's note), where I donated blood most often, they counted that I had donated 45 doses.
- How much is a dose? And how many liters of blood did you donate in total?
- The dose can be different. If it is whole blood, it is 450 ml, if it is blood for thromboconcentrate, it is about 400 ml. According to the norms, this is 18 liters of blood, but this is quite conditional, in fact, it is more.
By the way, the full name of the voluntary donation of blood for transfusion to sick or wounded people who need it, or for the use of its components, is “donation of blood and its components”. Because in medical practice, not only whole blood is used, but also its components (platelets, red blood cells, plasma), which have a therapeutic effect and are intended for use in certain diseases. When blood is donated for platelet concentrate, it is separated and part of it is returned to donors. By the way, the procedure for taking blood components for thromboconcentrate has been improved. When I first started donating it, needles were inserted into the veins of both arms - they took it from one arm and returned it to the other - not very convenient. Now it's all done with one hand.
- How long does the blood donation procedure take?
- It takes about an hour to donate platelet concentrate. It takes much less time to donate whole blood. For example, the last time I donated blood, I went to the Blood Center at 8 am and left at 8:35. Nowadays, the queue takes up most of the time, because the number of donors has increased. And this is very good - we need a lot of donated blood in our situation. When I first started donating blood, 2-3 people came. Now there is a real stream. This was facilitated by the removal of some restrictions on blood donation, which many people were not allowed to do before. Although, of course, some health contraindications remain. However, a relatively healthy person over the age of 18 can be a donor. And there is no upper age limit for this in the regulations.
Of course, when a person comes to donate blood for the first time, they get to know him or her, fill out a questionnaire indicating whether he or she has had Botkin's disease, any venereal diseases, etc. A visual examination is carried out, for example, my relative who suffers from varicose veins was not allowed to take part in the procedure.
- How many years have you been donating blood?
- It so happened that my donor experience is divided into two periods. The first one was from 2005 to 2009. Back then, there were very strict requirements for donors' health - almost like astronauts. Every year I underwent medical examinations, and suddenly in 2009 I was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis and was banned from donating blood. Although, in fact, as doctors later told me, this was complete nonsense: donation could not affect the quality of the blood, especially its components, or my overall health. So I took a break for 12 years. I started donating blood again only in 2022 and have been donating ever since.
- What made you decide to become a donor?
- Back at school, in the early 1990s, I heard about blood types. Once our entire class was taken to the clinic to donate blood to determine its group. We all donated blood together, and each of us took the results separately. I still looked at the results of my classmates - all of them had the first and second groups, and I had the fourth! I also thought - what could this mean, is it good or bad? I knew that there were fewer people with this group than with the others - about 5% of the total population, and nothing else. There was no Internet back then, but there were calls in newspapers and on television all the time: you need to donate blood, someone really needs blood, including those of the fourth group. I asked my father if I could donate blood, because I was almost an adult. He said no, not yet, because of my age. In addition, I was evacuated from the exclusion zone during the Chornobyl disaster, and donation was not encouraged for such people. And there were almost no disposable syringes back then, so people were simply afraid to donate blood.
So it wasn't until the summer of 2001, when I was 25 years old, that I went to the clinic during my vacation and asked to have my blood type rechecked to put it in my passport. They checked it and it was the fourth. They were looking for a stamp with this group for a long time, telling me that they either didn't have it or it was damaged, but they found an old half-worn one. And now it's January 2005. The victory of the Orange Revolution, in which I also took part, a general uplift. I read an announcement in one of the newspapers that the Kyiv City Blood Center on Maksyma Berlinskoho Street was in dire need of blood. People between the ages of 18 and 55 were invited. So I decided to go and do a good deed.
I arrived, and there was a line of 300 people. The center was quite neglected at the time, as it was built in 1957. I was interviewed, examined, had my blood pressure checked, and got permission. I was a little nervous before the first donation. But everything went well, and I started donating blood regularly. After the first five or six times, I was given a donor book. That's how I became a donor.
At that time, the Internet was already actively developing, and specialized donor sites appeared. I found one site, donor.org.ua, which was created by KPI graduate Oleksandr Brusylovsky, a very religious man. This resource was created to help children with cancer, and not only with donated blood. The first acquaintance with the site made a very heavy impression - so many children's misfortunes on its pages! Back then, parents took their sick children to Kyiv medical institutions - these were the addresses of hope. And I started donating blood regularly at Okhmatdyt. I also saw a lot of things there. Once again I realized that I was doing the right thing - my blood helps someone to survive. In this way, to a certain extent, I was and am repaying my debt, because I was evacuated from the Chernobyl zone and we were actually given only 15 years to live. And we, thank God, are living...
So I tried not to miss donations. Back then, a donor was allowed to donate whole blood 5 times a year, or 8 times for platelet concentrate.
- This is quite a lot. After all, you have to prepare for the donation and recover after it. How does all this happen?
- What exactly is a “donor”? This word comes from the Latin “donare”, which means “to give, to sacrifice”. That is, to give from the heart, not as a loan or otherwise. When you prepare to donate, you want to help others, and you have the opportunity to do so - that's the main thing. All sorts of things happen. So I donated blood for cancer patients, the wounded, firefighters, and women in labor. All sorts of things happened...
As for the preparation. When you are preparing to donate blood, you follow a certain regimen. For two or three days, you can't eat fatty, spicy, sweet foods, and you can't drink alcohol. Two hours before the donation, you can't smoke (although this restriction was not difficult for me, because I don't smoke at all). In other words, you should, so to speak, fast for the blood to be good. When you prepare in this way, you encourage yourself to live a healthy lifestyle.
And recovery... For each blood donation, we received a food package, and at the Okhmatdyt we were fed lunch: the donor's body needs good nutrition on such days. On the day you donate blood or its components, you are also released from work, and one more day is added to your vacation.
It is also worth reminding about the benefits of donation for the donors themselves, because regular blood renewal in the body avoids the risk of thrombosis; it, again, encourages a healthy lifestyle - sports, healthy eating, restful sleep, moderation and giving up bad habits; it ensures health monitoring through mandatory annual comprehensive examinations of the body for the possibility of donating blood.
Returning to our topic, I would say that by 2009 I had donated blood 28 times. And then, at the end of the year, the head of the department suddenly told me that with my chronic bronchitis, I could no longer donate blood - they had issued some regulations. That all the employees of the department were grateful to me, but they had no right to take my blood.
- How did you start donating blood again?
- I had to give up this business with great regret. After all, I continued to follow specialized websites, sometimes relatives of patients called me because my name remained in the databases, but I could not do anything. Then came the Revolution of Dignity and the beginning of the war with Russia. Do you need blood? Yes, we need it! And I was forbidden to donate it... And then my close university friend Pavlo Satskyi fell seriously ill. He was a strong guy, worked at the KNEU, defended his PhD thesis, and suddenly he got sarcoma. He tried to hold on, was treated, we talked regularly, and then in February 2022 he called and asked if I could donate blood for him - he remembered that I had once been a donor. And I believed that the old bans were still in force, so I found three donors for him among my friends and acquaintances. I took one of them - our employee Andriy Seredin - to the Blood Center on Berlinsky Street and thought: “12 years have passed. Why don't I give it a try, maybe the rules have changed since then?” So I filled out the questionnaire again, had my blood pressure measured, and went into the room where the head of the department, Natalia Vitaliyivna Kolomiets, was sitting. She, with her excellent memory, immediately recognized me and was happy that I was ready to donate blood again. It turned out that in 2021, the country's blood donation policy was revised: some restrictions were left in place (Botkin's disease, varicose veins, and a number of others), but most were canceled. I would like to note that the Center has changed for the better over the years, with the interiors renovated, a new computer database of donors created, and all equipment and machinery replaced. I told her about my friend, she examined me again and gave me the go-ahead to donate without hesitation.
So I started donating blood again. But, unfortunately, my friend died. Donated blood increases a patient's chances of recovery many times over, but it is not always a panacea. However, the chances it gives a person are very often decisive for them...
Soon a full-scale war broke out, and the need for donated blood increased exponentially. So I started donating blood again on a regular basis. By the way, now you can donate blood six times a year, or make more than twenty donations of platelet concentrate. So from February 9, 2022, when I donated blood for the first time after a break, until March 15, 2024, I donated 40 times, which is a little more than two years, and donated blood 12 more times. And I reached the standard that gives me the right to honorary donation. But, of course, I don't donate blood for this, and not for the small benefits that this status gives a person.
And I haven't seen people who are looking for some kind of benefit in donating. Moreover, the number of people who would like to donate blood has increased significantly. Although, I should note, doctors say that there is still not enough blood. Even in peacetime, the norm is that there should be 40 donors per 1,000 people. And now we have, at best, 30 people.
- What would you like to wish our readers?
- I try to encourage people to donate blood. You don't have to donate blood six times a year, but you can donate at least once every three months. By the way, many people understand this. Svitlana Anatoliyivna Utvenko, head of the CMC department, told me how a young, petite girl came to donate blood with her mother: “I turn 18 today, and I want to donate blood,” she said. And according to the standards, she should also have a weight of 50 kg or more, and there is no such thing. She is almost crying, they refused to give blood: they advised her to put on a little weight and come back again in about a year
I would like to see the number of people like this girl continue to grow. After all, I repeat, we do not have enough donor blood... So donate blood and be healthy!
Interviewed by Dmytro Stefanovych
For reference.
June 14 was not chosen by chance to celebrate World Blood Donor Day. On this day in 1868, Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943) was born - a prominent Austrian and American physician, chemist, immunologist, and infectious disease specialist. It was he who became the first researcher in the field of molecular and cellular medicine and in 1900 made an important discovery of human blood types - initially three, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The fourth blood group was discovered in 1907 by Czech physician Jan Jansky. In 1921, the American Medical Commission recognized Jansky's priority in the four-group classification over Karl Landsteiner. Jansky's classification is still in use today. In 1940, Landsteiner, together with Wiener, discovered the Rhesus antigen system. Dr. Landsteiner's discovery made it possible to make blood transfusion a common medical practice that saves lives.