Jared Formalejo, who has hemophilia B, and his wife, Alliah, live in the Philippines. They share about times people expressed fear about hemophilia and how they responded.

Jared: Around grade five, I used to have a classmate that was afraid of going near me. He kept on asking me, “Will I get hemophilia if I touch you?” He was obsessed about that. He wouldn’t believe that it’s genetic. So I am not sure what came over him, but he really got scared of me for a very long time because of hemophilia.

It took a few good years before we got to physically interacting. It was a strange moment in my life because it’s the first time I actually heard that from someone.

Alliah: Well, on my end, I’m actually used to people not really being familiar with what hemophilia is. So they tend to ask me about, “What is it? Can he die from a paper cut?”

Jared: Yeah, that was a serious question.

Alliah: And they tend to think that when wounds that bleed out are the kind of wounds that are really serious, and we have to explain that it’s actually the internal bleeds that are a lot worse.