Capgemini: The Real Stuff

Submitted by aurora on
There were no camps organized in the city from the mid of December due to upcoming holidays and year end schedule. The blood stocks in the city were running short and eventually we had a situation where even common groups were becoming hard to avail. The burden of managing the Thalassemia Day care was there and having to spend an entire day to arrange 7 A+ve donors for day care, we realized a camp is the need of the hour.

We tried exploring all possibilities for conducting camps in companies but of no avail. However in this dark hour, seeing the situation CapGemini agreed to go for a camp even though we had a camp with them one month back. The ever supporting and ever understanding folks at CapGemini did not waste a moment and finalised for a blood donation drive to be organised all at a day's notice. Some scepticism was there as to how many the units be collected when we had a 2 day major blood drive. But the folks at CapGemin rose to the occasion and 124 units of blood were collected at the most crucial time in the year.

This would not have been possible without the understanding and aggression with which Team CapGemini publicized and expressed sensitivity during the blood shortage. During the drive, a case of AB+ve shortage was reported in a Govt Blood Bank. On reporting this situation to the management an internal communication was sent to all employees and we had donors coming forward to donate.

Neither the blood bank nor us had anticipated such a response. At the end of camp we still had donors who were still waiting and wanting to donate! Hats off to the brave blood donors who sensing the need came forward for help. If there was a day for donors who were looking for the right moment to donate this was the day. Each unit donated was precious when no units of blood was available. However, this puts a serious question on the blood management during the times of shortage. Why do we have excess blood on one particular season and no blood on the other? We need to put additional effort, aggression and sensitivity to prevent such situations from occurring in future.