James Harrison made his final blood donation in 2018
An Australian man is credited with saving the lives of more than 2.4 million babies by a selfless act - donating blood. As per a CNN report, James Harrison donated blood nearly every week for 60 years, finally retiring in 2018. He was nicknamed "the man with the golden arm" because of his gesture. Mr Harrison was able to save so many lives because his blood has unique, disease-fighting antibodies that have been used to develop an injection called Anti-D, which helps fight against rhesus disease.
The condition affects some pregnant women where antibodies in the blood start attacking their unborn babies (called rhesus D hemolytic disease or HDN).
The condition develops when a pregnant woman has rhesus-negative blood and the baby in her womb has rhesus-positive, inherited from his father, as per CNN.
If the woman is sensitised to RhD positive blood, usually using a previous pregnancy, her body many have antibodies that attack the "foreign" blood cells of the baby, which could prove deadly.
HDN causes multiple miscarriages, still births, and brain damage or fatal anaemia in newborns.
In his 60 years, Mr Harrison made 1,173 donations, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The antibody to produce the vaccine was extracted from his blood plasma.
The cure was discovered by Australian geneticists in the 1960s who realised that injecting Rh negative pregnant women with low levels of donated RhD immunoglobulin. The antibodies counter the Rh positive cells without harming the body, according to the outlet.
Mr Harrison produces the rare combination of RhD negative blood and Rh positive antibodies naturally, making him the ideal donor.
Jemma Falkenmire at the Australian Red Cross Blood Donor Service told The Sydney Morning Herald that very few people in the world have these antibodies in such strong concentrations.
"His body produces a lot of them and when he donates his body produces more," she said.
Mr Harrison started donating blood after receiving 13 units of blood transfusions following a major chest surgery at the age of 14. He said this was his way of giving back after receiving his own life-saving transfusion.