City blood banks struggle to meet platelet demand

Jaipur: Having recorded a dip in the number of blood donors during the festive season, blood banks in the city are presently facing a difficult time to meet the demand for platelets.

At a time when dengue is taking a toll on people's health, the requirement of platelets has also increased significantly. Rajasthan State Blood Transfusion Council (RSBTC) has ordered all its blood banks to segregate platelets from the blood they collected from donations to meet the demand. Blood banks are witnessing queues and repeated calls demanding platelets.

"Usually in normal days, we do not segregate platelets from blood. But, as demand has increased as dengue cases have increased, we have ordered all our blood banks to segregate platelets from blood collected from donation which is required in dengue patients," said an official of Rajasthan State Blood Transfusion Council (RSBTC).

Even private blood banks are facing shortage of platelets to meet the demand. "We have three blood banks. Daily we are receiving 300 units of platelets but we are only providing them 150 to 200 units of platelets," said, Anand Agarwal, director, Swasthya Kalyan Blood Banks.

He said that the shortage has cropped up due to lack of blood donations done in the past 15 to 20 days. "People remained busy in festivals which affected blood donation," said Agarwal adding that he appealed to the youth to donate blood to meet the requirement.

Another blood bank official, who is posted in a private hospital, also reported shortage of platelets. "We hope that the situation would improve as festive season is over and people will come to donate blood," the official said.

More than 2,000 dengue positive cases have already been reported this year. Besides, there are other viral fevers in which platelets take a dip requiring platelet transfusion.

"It's our appeal to every citizen of the country that if they can come forward with platelet donation in this festival season it will help in saving lives and this will be biggest celebration and biggest service to mankind," said Hitesh Bhandia, chief convener, mega blood donation drive.

He said that every day he receives calls from at least 10 persons demanding platelets. "Two days ago, we received a call demanding platelet of O negative blood group. We searched for it but it was really difficult for us to arrange it," said Bhandia.

The major challenge for blood banks is that the life of platelets is only five days. After five days, the platelets expire. In such a situation, the blood banks cannot store platelets for a long time.

There are two kinds of platelets donation—single donor platelets (SDP) and random donor platelets (RDP). The amount of platelets collected from eight RDP is equal to one SDP, a blood bank official said, adding that they encourage SDP when the demand of platelet has increased but SDP is a costly process requiring more than Rs 9,000. When the cost of SDP is so high, they cannot collect platelets from SDP in large quantity as there are chances of it expiring.