Published: 2:47pm, 4 Mar 2025Updated: 2:50pm, 4 Mar 2025
An Australian man credited with saving 2.4 million babies through his record-breaking blood plasma donations over six decades, has died aged 88, his family said on Tuesday.
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James Harrison, a retired state railway department clerk, died in a nursing home where he had lived for five weeks on the Central Coast of New South Wales state on February 17, according to his grandson, Jarrod Mellowship.
Harrison had been surprised to be recognised by Guinness World Records in 2005 as the person who had donated the most blood plasma in the world, Mellowship said.
Despite an aversion to needles, he made 1,173 donations after he turned 18 in 1954 until he was forced to retire in 2018, aged 81.
“He did it for the right reasons. As humble as he was, he did like the attention. But he would never do it for the attention,” Mellowship said.
The record was beaten in 2022 by American Brett Cooper from Walker, Michigan.