City’s blood banks to run dry from want of donors

Nimesh Khakhariya | TNN | Apr 4, 2020, 04:00 IST

cap

Rajkot: While the lockdown has definitely affected lives of people, the worst hit are the blood banks which are facing acute shortage right now. Take the instance of Rajkot Civil Hospital, which had to get 65 bottles of blood all the way from Bhavnagar, around 200km away, to tide over an emergency on Thursday.
With the lockdown, blood donation camps have stopped and so has the flow of free blood from such donors. According to rough estimate, blood banks are facing nearly 50 percent blood shortage of blood they require every day. Even with the provision of pick and drop facility for donors, the trickle is too thin to suffice the needs, they rue.
There are six blood banks in the city including the civil hospital.
According to blood banks managements, Rajkot city requires 90 bottles of blood per day but they are now able to get hold of 45 to 50 bottles only. All planned surgeries are being postponed but the major requirement of the blood is for the thalassaemia patients, dialysis and for pregancy-related treatment.
The head of the pathology department of PDU medical college, Gauravi Dhruva said, “We are sending our van to different places, where we collect blood from only 10-12 donors by maintaining lockdown protocols of social distancing and other hygiene. There was a meeting with collector on Friday, in which it has been decided that private blood banks will be allowed to provide pick up and drop facility to the donors.”
According to the doctors a woman sometimes require 7-8 bottles (one bottle is one unit) of blood in two three days after delivery, if there is excessive bleeding. In the same manner, in case of cardiac arrest patients too, there is immediate requirement of blood.
All the blood banks have joined hands and created thalassaemia Jan Jagruti Abhiyan Samiti to tide over the current situation. Convener of the samiti, D V Mehta said, “While the requirement has been reduced in the past week by 50%, collection of blood has also dropped to 10%. The blood banks now share different areas and collect blood from the donors. We have prepared a sheet towards that purpose and getting registrations of donors through mobile app.”
While at the moment all planned surgeries are on hold, after April 15, demand of blood will increase rapidly, he said.
President of Rajkot branch of Indian Red Cross Society, Deepak Patel said, “Every month we provide 150 bottles of blood to thalassaemic children. The donors are afraid to come to our banks due to the lockdown and so, we are sending our van to residential societies even if there are only only 10 donors there.”
Patel also added that if the situation will not improve soon, we may face acute shortage of the blood.
Quality manager of life blood centre, Dr Nishit Vacchani said, “There is requirement between 60 to 80 units of blood every day against which we are being able to manage only 30 to 35 units during the lockdown.”
In a late development, education institutions have set a target to collect 5000 bottles of blood in the next 10 days. Syndicate member of Saurashtra University, Mehul Rupani said: “We have set a target to collect 5000 bottles from Saurashtra university campus, self-finance colleges, private universities, government and granted colleges, nursing and physiotherapy colleges and Ayurveda and homeopathy colleges. These blood units will be provided to the blood banks of the city.”