The week leading to the World Blood Donor Day on Sunday has not been particularly fulfilling for Paul George. For, not a single donor turned up to give blood despite fervent efforts by Dr. George, the medical officer for the blood bank at the Government Medical College (GMC), Kalamassery, to woo donors.
The situation has been grim for the GMC blood bank ever since it was declared a COVID Centre scaring away potential donors. With a large number of pregnant women getting admitted after being brought back from abroad on a priority basis, the requirement for blood has soared for caesarean, and rarely, Medical Termination of Pregnancy procedures. Not to mention the need for blood and platelets transfusion for patients admitted with COVID-19 symptoms, but later found to be suffering from dengue or malaria.
“We are running short of platelets and packaged red blood cell with a shelf life of five days and 42 days respectively. We used to get around 20 donors a day. Now we do not get even a single one for a week despite appealing on social media and the AIR,” rued Dr. George.
Reasons for plight
The closure of seven colleges in the neighbourhood of GMC, a source of young donors, and the absence of caregivers of patients who were very proactive in arranging donors have not helped either.
“The pandemic has severely crippled blood donation. Even regular donors are reluctant to volunteer in the face of pressure from family and peers. Reports of health workers contracting the virus has accentuated those anxieties,” said Jishnu Raj, a patron of Blood Donors Kerala (BDK), a forum with over 50,000 donors across the State.
The BDK has seen the number of donors plummet from 350-450 a day to below 150 since the outbreak of the pandemic.
Reduced options
Though in-house blood donation camps are being held at hospitals and blood banks with limited donors, they are far from adequate. With blood donation camps now only a fraction of what it used to be and more stringent screening mechanisms leading to increased rejections of potential donors especially with travel history outside and within the country, this World Blood Donors Day paints a far from rosy picture.