London’s Brazilian Blood Couriers

I’m standing outside the Halo Laboratory, a sleek tower building in Kings Cross, as thick clouds gather overhead and a fleet of mopeds emblazoned with stickers reading URGENT BLOOD DELIVERY and NHS Blood pull up to the pavement. One for the Brazilian football team Palmeiras FC gives a clue as to where most of these drivers are from.

“Anything that comes from a human”, shrugs Joao*, a driver from Sao Paulo who didn’t want to be identified by his employer, when I ask what other human substances the couriers might carry. “I’ve had foetus… piece of flesh in a test tube… big bottle of urine…”, he lists off laconically, drawing out the final word to show he could happily go on. 

The term ‘blood bikes’ often refers to large, lurid yellow motorcycles on which volunteer riders ferry blood across the country — a service with over 40 groups across the UK. But in London, a very different kind of blood bike is king. Private companies such as The Doctor’s Laboratory (TDL), CitySprint and eCourier employ legions of moped riders to ship blood, tissue and medical samples across the city, working with major NHS hospitals and private healthcare providers. TDL is the UK’s largest private pathology testing company, responsible for all cervical cancer screening in Greater London

Some drivers spend 12 hours straight on the roads, dashing between hospitals to supply life-saving transfusions. And while there’s a sprinkling of other nationalities, there’s a clear trend among the drivers — almost all are Brazilian. 

Outside the Halo Laboratory I meet Cezar, 40, a broad-shouldered guy also from Sao Paolo, with pared back reddish hair. “It was only meant to be for three years”, he says, grinning, when I ask what made him leave Brazil back in 2011. “I was deciding with my wife to come here, try something new, learn a little bit of English and try a new life. Now our family’s growing, we have a daughter - life’s here and I don’t think to go back.”

As we chat, Cezar’s workmate, a younger guy wearing a black bandana, comes over and chucks his arms around him. “Big driver”, he says, grabbing Cezar’s right bicep, then squeezes his own: “medium”.

“Stop”, says Cezar, pushing him away, before a ping on his friend’s phone alerts him of a job — an urgent blood transfusion, somewhere across the city. 

Drivers call themselves motoboys, a catch-all term for the moped couriers that fill the sprawling streets of cities like Sao Paolo. “It’s because we all drive motorcycles around Brazil”, explains Maninho, a courier from near the border with Paraguay. Slightly apprehensive of me initially,  he warms up when I tell him I’m writing about motoboy blood couriers. “Blood is much better than food” he says, enthusiastically, “because you don’t work at night. You work days, not weekends.”

Drivers who do urgent deliveries work around the clock. But a lot of blood courier work is routine testing and pathology services, and so brings with it the stability of a 9-5. Drivers might do 10 deliveries a day, riding all across London, rather than the frenetic city-centre rush of UberEats and Deliveroo.

“If you’re delivering food, nobody gives a fuck about you”, says Luis, a young rider from Sao Paolo with a toothy grin and an image of Homer Simpson eating a donut saved as his lockscreen. “You just show the food, they don’t care. With blood it’s more respect.”