James Harrison, credited with saving 2.4 million babies via blood plasma donations, dies at 88

Melbourne, Australia — An Australian man credited with saving 2.4 million babies through his record-breaking blood plasma donations over six decades, has died, his family said Tuesday. He was 88.

James Harrison, a retired state railway department clerk, died in a nursing home on the central coast of New South Wales state on Feb. 17, according to his grandson, Jarrod Mellowship.

Harrison's plasma contained a rare antibody known as anti-D. It's used to make injections that protect unborn babies from hemolytic disease of the newborn, in which a pregnant woman's immune system attacks her fetus' red blood cells. The disease is most common when a woman has an Rh-negative blood type and her baby's is Rh-positive.