Living Blood Bank:
How Thai Buddhist Monks are Helping Their Communities Prevent HIV

(Your Narrator's Note: This is a from the e-group "SEA-AIDS," a group focused on HIV/AIDS and other health and development issues in Asia and the Pacific, and coordinated by HDnet.org)
Laurie Maund
Sangha Metta Project

Buddhist monks and novices teaching and studying at a temple school in Chiang Mai, Thailand, have set up a "living blood bank" which they plan to use as a model in HIV/AIDS prevention.

The monks and novices symbolically donate their blood at a local hospital or blood bank. The blood is not physically taken from their body, but their names, addresses, phone number and blood group are taken and kept at the hospital or blood bank so that they can be called upon for donations or in case of emergency. For the donors, their body is the blood bank.

Before a statue of the Buddha, they vow to respect their blood as "community blood" and look after it on behalf of the community or anyone who may need it in the future. As monks and novices, they already practise celibacy so there is little or virtually no risk of infection. Back in their communities, they plan to recruit members of the "living blood bank" from among community youth and other community members. Members will make a vow not to do anything that could put this "community blood" at risk.

In this way, they are not only assuring a supply of untainted blood, but are also applying traditional values and culture, and indirectly encouraging youth and community members to abstain from any behaviour that could put the "community blood" at risk of infection. And, in accordance with their tradition, they are accumulating merit that could help them in this or future lives.