Action Karate in Lower Nazareth Township will be sponsoring a blood drive in conjunction with Miller-Keystone Blood Center at their school on Saturday, February 26th, 2011. The blood drive is open to anyone in the community and donors may register ahead of the date on the school’s website.Seth and Dawn Bittner, owners and operators of Action Karate in Nazareth, organized the blood drive to help increase local blood supplies and raise awareness for Kell, a substance in human blood that can causes severe hemolytic disease in newborn babies. A mother that tests positive for Kell may develop antibodies against the red blood cells of her fetus, destroying those cells and fetal bone marrow while also causing fetal anemia. The only hope for the baby’s survival involves blood transfusions through the umbilical cord and then again, in the first month after birth.
Raising awareness of Kell became a personal quest after learning that Seth Bittner’s brother, Shaughn, and niece Courtney, tested positive for the antigen. Kell was also passed along to his sister-in-law, Beth, during Courtney’s birth. This means that any future children the couple has, as well as any children Courtney has, will probably require blood transfusions to survive.
Shaughn and Beth Bittner have said, “If it were not for these blood transfusions, our child probably would not survive. Thanks to the donations of very special people, we can rest easy knowning that when needed, our child will receive the blood transfusion he needs in order to survive.”
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