Man loses weight to donate blood to stranger

A man in Shanghai lost 11 kg within two months to be eligible to donate stem cells to a patient from Henan province suffering aplastic anemia, Wuhan Morning News reported on Thursday.

Pan Weizhong, 39, a worker in Shanghai, registered as a blood donor with the China Bone Marrow Bank in March 2007 and was told in October 2013 that his hematopoietic stem cells matched a 28-year-old woman Han Guilin who had aplastic anemia. Pan needed to lose weight to meet the requirements for such donors.

On Wednesday, 300 ml of hematopoietic stem cells donated by Pan were sent to a hospital in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, where Han was awaiting a transplant. Doctors there said Han should recover within a year of the cell transplant.