The NNHF is proud to be working closely with the Claudio Luiz Pizzigatti Correa Hemocentre as part of its second project in Brazil.  The centre is part of the health sciences campus of UNICAMP, the University of Campinas.  Here, Claudio’s sister (pictured left, with her other brother) explains the fascinating and moving story of how the centre came to be named after her brother.

“Claudio, the youngest of four siblings, was born in Piracicaba – Sao Paulo, in 1979.  He was the only one in the whole family to have severe hemophilia. There's no denying that the diagnosis panicked and disrupted the whole family for a period. It was hard to "get used to the idea" and deal with the bleeding episodes. At the time, the haematologist to whom we were referred charged for consultations and transfusions, which was not easy. In spite of his suffering, Claudio grew up as a quiet, happy and sweet person. He was very special, not only to the family, but to everyone. He enjoyed good conversation and dancing.  He played keyboards in the family's band. He loved sports, played soccer and with the support of my mother, could perform many of his teenage dreams. He studied up until high school and died at the age of 19, infected with HIV.

The history of blood donation began when, in a crisis for obtaining donors for the production of cryoprecipitate in the late 1980s, my parents were invited to bring donors to the Blood Centre in Campinas. We are a simple family of Piracicaba, a rural area in São Paulo. My father was a truck driver and my mother a schoolteacher. Although the whole family was from Piracicaba, at the time we didn’t have a social network that would allow us to find blood donors in the volume that was requested. So my parents started going to neighbourhood community meetings, social groups, churches and everywhere where people congregated, in order to invite them to donate blood. My brother often accompanied my parents because my father thought it was important that the people knew who they would be donating their blood to.

Soon, my father began to fill the car every weekend - sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays - and bring 4-5 donors per day to the Blood Centre in Campinas. He tried to make things comfortable for the donors, buying snacks on the way back and forth to Piracicaba as well as picking them up and bringing them back to their homes. After a period doing this, the leaders of the Blood Centre realised the need and built a team that went from Campinas to places previously visited by my parents for blood collection. The first external collection of this kind was made in Rio das Pedras in 1985 - near Piracicaba - where Claudio’s godfather lived. Since then, external collections were organized in collaboration with the family and the Blood Centre.

At this stage, it was left to our family to organize things like calling donors and also providing lunch for donors and staff. I remember my father cooked steak with sauce for the collections team and we prepared the donors’ lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, juice and coffee. Sometimes we got donations from bakeries but in the beginning, everything was paid for by my parents.

After the death of my brother Claudio in 1990, donors continued to look for my parents because they were accustomed to and wanted to continue with the donations. It was then that the Lyons Club invited them to join the team and since then, the club also began to participate in the organisation of the donations.

So until today, my father (81) and mother (78), still work in the organization of monthly blood collections in the region of Piracicaba.”

Maria Elvira is now a dentist at the Claudio Luiz Pizzigatti Correa Hemocentre.  To read more about the NNHF project in Brazil, click here