Month: January 2020
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Humanitarian for all: The life of Henry Dunant
Stephen KosnarLima, Peru In his late thirties and bankrupt, Henry Dunant lived in abject poverty, on occasion being forced to eat bread crusts and sleep outdoors in Paris. It is a bitter slice of one man’s history, particularly given that only a few years earlier he had founded the International Committee of the Red Cross.1…
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Yellow blood: Learn from yesterday
Meguna NakaiNagoya, Japan In 2020 Japan will host the second Tokyo Olympics. When the first Olympics were televised in 1964, people were surprised to find that Japan had developed so quickly even though only nineteen years had passed after World War II. Yet there remained much to be done. One urgent need was to improve…
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Blood on the road
Anne Marie Appelgren Málaga, Spain “The wounded are dying, searching for blood. Now the blood can move, now the blood can search out the wounded.” – Norman Bethune “Bethune was a man of destiny. He lived and died for blood.” – Hazen Sise On a gray evening in London in the fall of 1936, a…
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The mysterious Red Cross boy
Emeka Chibuikem V.Enugu State, Nigeria Who is this Red Cross Boy? This is the question to which I could find no answer until this day. I am Alex, from the Igbo tribe in the South-East of Nigeria, and I was born out of wedlock in 1991 to a single mother who died in 1998, while…
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Bloody art
Francesca Portante d’AlessandroRome, Italy Blood has always been depicted in art, from cavemen’s hunts, to medieval altarpieces and battle scenes, to modern film and photography. Blood is able to simultaneously represent both life and death, the sacred and profane, violence and martyrdom, disease and healing, purity and impurity.1 Its meaning, however, can also vary depending…
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Destination assured—The power of the cross
Kelsey Wollin DunnOregon, Wisconsin, United States The most powerful and mysterious statement ever made about blood was first uttered about two thousand years ago by Jesus of Nazareth. In the present day, it continues to be recited regularly throughout the world by Christian leaders to more than two billion followers.1, 2 Holy Communion is an…
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“The Blood Battle”: Using science to combat the fear of blood
Kayla PeñaProvidence, Rhode Island Forty years ago, the University of Michigan and Ohio State University competed in their first “Blood Battle.” Although typically known for their football rivalry, in 1982 the universities decided to expand their competition to see which school could donate more blood.1 Now every November, the students volunteer their veins to help…
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There is power in the blood
Mark TanNorthwest Deanery, UK “Carne fa carne e vino fa sango” [Meat makes flesh and wine makes blood]— Italian proverb Laura was covered in blood when the paramedics arrived at her house. Her husband, in a state of shock, had gathered every available towel in the vicinity, but it seemed too little and too late.…
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Grit
Romalyn AnteWolverhampton, England My mother is right—my brother’s blood is getting dirtier. A nurse like me, she had read the result of his glomerular filtration rate, a test that measures how well the kidneys clean the blood. It had dropped below 15, an indication that his chronic renal failure was reaching its end stage. Some…