Blood banks across city, districts take steps to combat crisis in summers

Kolkata: The central blood bank in Manicktala and various other blood banks at medical colleges across the city are undertaking all possible measures to combat the crisis of blood which generally occurs during summers.

Due to recently concluded Panchayat elections, blood donation camps were not organised properly in the districts, which not only provide a constant supply of blood to the central blood bank but also to other state-run hospitals and medical colleges in the city and districts.

The central blood bank director Kumaresh Halder, however, told Millennium Post that there is adequate units of blood preserved and are ready to address the situation during scorching summer days. Halder also mentioned that there is a crisis of negative or rare blood groups at the central blood bank, which is difficult for them to address. But the overall situation is normal as there is enough storage of blood.

There is always a crisis of rare blood groups at the hospitals due to the non-availability of donors. Out of 100 donors, one or two people have blood of rare groups. Hence, there's always a crisis at all the medical college

blood banks.It may be mentioned that the central blood bank was on the eye of storm a couple of months ago, when many units of blood stored with the bank had allegedly expired and had gone to waste.

The incident had triggered controversy as many patients were allegedly denied blood during that period owing to the wastage of huge amount of blood.

But to mitigate the crisis, all the blood banks including that of the state-run medical colleges are organising camps in various places to meet the demands of blood. According to sources, all the medical colleges require 100-150 units of blood on a daily basis. Some units are kept preserved at the hospital blood banks for

emergency cases.

A senior official of SSKM Hospital blood bank said people whose relatives are undergoing treatment in the hospital and will require a surgery must be aware so that they can arrange donors.

This will help in releasing the burden on the hospital blood bank.

All the blood banks maintain a data, containing the numbers of the donors with rare blood groups, so that in case of emergency they can be contacted.