By Vessela Sergueva - Agence France-Presse

SOFIA - Bulgaria’s poor have begun to sell their blood on the black market, compounding a shortage of supplies at the country’s blood banks and hospitals that has worsened steadily since the end of the communist era.

The former communist regime regularly conducted blood donation campaigns in companies, schools and army barracks and rewarded donors with three days’ holiday from work. But these incentives were dropped when Bulgaria made the transition to a free market economy after 1989.

“The poor economy, people’s fears for the future, the collapse of moral values and increasing emigration by the youth, mean that the blood supply at transfusion centers has dropped by 44 percent in the past 10 years,” the head of the blood transfusion department at the National Center for Hemotology, Violeta Magaeva, said. Hospitals are now so short of blood that, except in emergencies, doctors will no longer operate on patients unless they can prove their relatives have donated the blood they need.

The crisis has helped foster a burgeoning black market for both blood and blood certificates. Outside Sofia’s blood transfusion center, a dozen gypsies were seen this week asking strangers: “Do you need blood?” At least one of them found a buyer.

“My wife was rushed to the hospital with a stomach ulcer and has already received two blood transfusions. The doctors said she needed another but I needed to bring a certificate to show that somebody has donated blood for her,” elderly Ivan Ivanov told AFP. No longer able to donate blood himself, Ivanov paid one of the youths to do so for him and waited on a garden bench for him to come back with the certificate of proof.

A 42-year-old widower who asked not to be named told AFP he donated blood every two months — “because it is against the law to do it more often” — and then sold his blood donor certificate for between 30 and 80 leva on the black market. “I am not doing anything wrong, I am helping to save people’s lives,” he added.