Annual blood donor clinic marks end of an era

NAAS, 20 July 1999: by Trish Whelan & Brian Byrne. The annual summer blood donor clinic being held in Naas this week marks the end of an era for the service, as for the first time locally-born journalist Chris Glennon is not involved. He recently handed over the organisation of the Naas clinics to former UDC councillor Teresa Scanlon, ending a 42-year association with the operation.

His first connection to the service was when he was a 17-year-old junior reporter with the Leinster Leader and he was asked by Naas solicitor Brendan O’Flynn to give some publicity to a new voluntary blood donation operation. “Prior to that, donors had been paid two guineas per donation, but the system was changed. In Naas, the first organisation meeting was in the courthouse and it was from that that they asked me to help.”

He did more than just publicise it ... though too young to give blood himself, Chris organised a number of older colleagues from work to make donations at the first clinic, held in the old technical school on the Limerick Road. That bit of in-house organisation landed him with a bigger job as Brendan O’Flynn asked him to take over the whole thing for the following Easter clinic. Getting donors interested was a two-pronged exercise - first by writing cards to every adult in town, and then enlisting the help of the local clergy.

“Fr J J Doyle was parish priest at the time and he gave us great support. And it all seemed to work ... I think people suddenly realised that this was a real community thing, doing something valuable for others and at the same time something which might someday benefit themselves or their families." Through the years the clinic had several ‘homes’, including the Army Apprentice School where the late Col Jock McDonald was OC, the Town Hall where the big ‘Pelican’ van was highly visible and a reminder to donors, and St Patrick’s Post Primary School where principal Tom Keegan was always on hand to offer help. “When we moved it to the school, we had to time the clinic for when the exams were over.”

The service quickly became a twice-yearly event, with the second clinic being held just after Christmas. Chris figures that neither time was quite suitable, but his efforts to change the dates were turned down, ironically because of the consistent success of the clinics. “We brought the numbers up to around 450 and Naas gained a reputation in the service for being very consistent - a ‘safe’ clinic where the Board were sure of getting their numbers,” he recalls. “Those numbers were about as much as could be handled in a three-day session.”

Keeping them up did require some carefully-timed prompting, both through a ‘network’ of regulars who could be relied on to remind others of upcoming clinics and through the good offices of Mick Scott in the Post Office. “Our winter clinic was held on the last three days of the year, just after Christmas and with bank holidays intervening. Mick arranged things so that the reminder call-up cards would go out in the first post after Christmas, usually even on the first day of the clinic.”

The Order of Malta in Naas was also a key element in the running of the clinic, with volunteers always on hand to hand out the tea and biscuits, the Guinness and the soft drinks. Individuals strong in Chris’s memory included the late Mary Norton, Mona Conroy, and his own mother Mary and her friend Molly Donnelly. “Another stalwart was Michael Farrell in the Town Hall, who always made sure things were in order for the clinics there ... nothing stopped him, not even one Christmas when roads were almost impassable with snow.”

But nothing runs like clockwork for ever, and it was something outside the control of local clinic workers that finally caused a major blip in the service - the Hepatitis C situation that ‘broke’ in the early 90s. “In fact, it didn’t seem to have any effect on the level of donations until about 18 months after it all became public,” Chris remembers. “Then we had a dramatic drop in attendance, down by about 20%. But even that was less than it had become in many other clinics around the country, so the Naas people actually stayed true to the reputation they had in the service. But it took three years before we got our numbers back up to what they had been, and personally I felt outraged about the way the whole situation was handled in an organisation run by professional people.”

While the BTSB dithered about handling the crisis, he began his own local PR campaign amongst existing and former donors, and to potential new ones. The core of it was that in no way could anything be transmitted back to a donor through the process of giving blood. In addition, the practical benefits of the free blood pressure checks and the screening of individuals’ blood was something that directly benefited those who gave. “If there was anything wrong with your blood that you didn’t know about, you’d be told and asked to visit your GP, who would be given all the details. That is a really beneficial service.”

The background of donors was very wide-ranging, with a strong representation from young adults involved in organisations such as the Defence Forces or the Gardai and Fire Service. Outside of those, women have always been particularly to the fore in giving blood. “I think they are usually more conscious of the need for blood supplies in hospitals than the men, probably because they have occasion to be in hospitals more when they’re having babies. But there is a strong natural charity among Irish people, and I always found that once you persuaded somebody to be a donor once, they keep coming back.”

There are strong family connections involved too, and giving blood has often become a family affair, with new generations taking up the ‘pelican’ practice from their parents’ example. That said, Chris Glennon believes there is still room for improvement and in one way that prompted him to step down from something which has been an embedded part of his life for his working lifetime so far.

“I felt for some time that it needed somebody with new ideas,” he says. “In fact, I’d planned to hand it over several years ago. But then the Hep C situation happened, and I didn’t feel I could leave while there was a serious problem. Now the numbers are back up, and it really is time for me to call it a day.”

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