From the day Javeria and Usman Ahmad brought their baby boy, Ismaeel, home from hospital, the family lived in self-imposed lockdown for two years, long before anybody had heard of COVID-19.
They had no visitors, washed their hands with military precision and disinfected all surfaces before sanitising stations flanked every storefront.Credit:Ismaeel’s big sister, Rumaysa, was held back from kindergarten to avoid the risk of her bringing home any of the usual bugs children swapped in the playground.
You wouldn’t know it to look at Ismaeel today. He is thriving thanks to fortnightly infusions of a life-saving medicine of infection-fighting antibodies made from the blood plasma donated by strangers. Lifeblood’s chief executive Shelly Park said thousands more donors are needed to meet the growing demand driven by improvements in diagnoses.Credit:Doctors are finding more uses for blood plasma across an expanding array of acute and chronic medical conditions including cancer, immune disorders, haemophilia, kidney disease and trauma patients, Park said.
Just one of these medicines, immunoglobulin , is essential for more than 13,300 Australians who need it every month to treat their acute or chronic conditions,” Chesneau said.
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