Australian blood donor who helped save 2.4M babies dies at 88
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian man credited with saving 2.4 million babies through his record-breaking blood plasma donations over six decades, has died, his family said Tuesday. He was 88.
James Harrison, a retired state railway department clerk, died in a nursing home on the central coast of New South Wales state on Feb. 17, according to his grandson, Jarrod Mellowship.
Harrison’s plasma contained a rare antibody, known as anti-D, which is used to make injections that protect unborn babies from hemolytic disease of the newborn, in which a pregnant woman’s immune system attacks her fetus’ red blood cells. The disease is most common when a woman has an Rh negative blood type and her baby’s is Rh positive.
Australia has only 200 anti-D donors who help 45,000 mothers and their babies annually.
Despite an aversion to needles, Harrison made 1,173 donations after he turned 18 in 1954 until he was forced to retire in 2018, aged 81.
“He did it for the right reasons. As humble as he was, he did like the attention. But he would never do it for the attention,” Mellowship said, adding his grandfather had been surprised to be recognized by Guinness World Records in 2005 as the person who had donated the most blood plasma in the world.