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Diplomat's blood donor registry breaks barriers

Dubai - Indian consul's website attracts 17 nationalities

A blood donor registry set up by an Indian diplomat - said to be the UAE's first and largest - has received a massive response from the residents.
As many as 2,000 potential donors from 17 nations have come forward to register their names, although the lion's share is from Indian community.
Dr Tiju Thomas, consul (Economic and Education), who practised medicine prior to switching his career, created the free web portal www.blooddonors.ae to support blood donor search and donation in the UAE.
The registry had a soft launch on the World Blood Donor Day on June 14, followed by an official unveiling at the International Yoga Day event held in Dubai on June 21.
Within three months, almost 2,000 potential donors registered themselves with the portal and the database of some 9,000 more volunteers has also been received, Dr Tiju told Khaleej Times. "I'm very happy and satisfied to note that people have come forward irrespective of their religion, caste and creed," he said.
After the first report of the registry in Khaleej Times, doctor-turned-diplomat said, the portal received over 125,000 hits in four days.
Indian associations and religious groups also came forward to support the registry by adding volunteer donors affiliated to them.
The Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre ran a special campaign to get the database of people willing to add their details to the registry.
"They did a great job and got the database of 5,001 volunteers. Similarly, the Sikh community has gathered the details of some 2,000 people and the Christian churches have supported with over 1,000 volunteers' details."
Dr Tiju dubs the donors' registry as a gift of the Indian community to the UAE community and his biggest achievement during his three-year stint with the Indian Consulate in Dubai.
Mission will continue
His tenure here is coming to an end in a week's time and Dr Tiju will be returning to New Delhi. However, he promises to continue to work for the people of the UAE.
"The portal is on auto-pilot mode. But I will have to add the database collected so far and continue to do the back-end administration work, which I will be doing from wherever I am," he said.
"The next level is to give better awareness to hospitals here through the health departments so that they can directly make use of the system when there is a need for blood. The portal can also be further helpful in developing facilities like registry of bone marrow donors."
The diplomat has also been approached by the Indian missions in Ethiopia, Kenya, Bahrain and Kuwait to develop similar donor registries for those countries. He has agreed to support them as well.
sajila@khaleejtimes.com