Alternatives to blood and it's products.

Hi everyone sorry I have been AWOL , been balancing work and being a mother it's not easy.

Anyway today am going to bring up an issue close to my heart. I am actually a medical doctor when am not blogging don't mind me. 

So blood is vital to life like water, but with all the knowledge and technical know how, how come the world is yet to produce a product that similar functions to blood. 

I was on call sometime ago when I was lucky to view an open heart surgery (it's a big deal in our region) So after the surgery which required like 8 pints of blood on standby, the patient started having internal bleeding, the hematology/blood bank were informed but they were slow on acting or didn't act at all saying there was no blood in the haematology/blood bank. In the end the promising young man died. Blood is needed by many to name a few:

1) for transfusion(sickle cell disease, shock of hemorrhagic origin, etc) 

2) for major surgeries(open heart surgery, etc) 

3) for cancer patients.(Blood cancers: ALL, AML, CLL etc) 

There are already existing products but they don't serve the function or even close to that of blood. 

Examples:

1) Volume expanders( these do not carry oxygen or raise the number of blood cells) 

2) Haematopoietic growth factors[these 

a) takes a few days to a week to act 

b) people with severe bone marrow disease may not respond to the growth factors because they do not have enough haematopoietic cells 

c) Sometimes these growth factors can even cause some types of cancers(ALL, etc) 

d) most times they cost more than even the normal blood transfusion 

So I challenge every haematologist or future haematologists to start thinking of salvaging this burden to help save lives. 

Thank you,  happy Eid Mubarak my readers.