Incidence Report

Long way ahead to prevent unnecessary suffering for patients with Bombay blood group

Recently, we had a situation where a pregnant woman who was close to delivery was detected with Bombay blood group. She was shifted to Bangalore because the local doctors were uncomfortable handling the situation. The lady had haemoglobin on 12 gm/dl and it was then that it was discovered that the patient had extremely low platelets as well.

Donor Counselling - the long road ahead
Counselling donors is an important and integral part of blood banking. Counsellors have various roles to play in the blood banking setup. In voluntary blood donation drives, a counsellor plays the role of speaking to the donor before blood donation where he/she encourages the donor to donate and gets an assurance that required pre donation criteria is met.
souravroy
How long should we stand and watch precious blood getting wasted?
One of our regular blood donors called us on 29th May, 2015, asking if there is any blood unit of Bombay blood group available in Bangalore. A child in one of the reputed heart hospital was in need of 3 units of Bombay blood group to undergo a heart surgery.
souravroy
Blood donation - not blood insurance!

On a busy day in a blood donation drive I was taking care of the pre-donation area. The room available for the camp was not very large so the registration and waiting area were organised in the corridor outside.

souravroy
Go get donors and then we will give you blood!

The following article relating to remand for replacement blood units has been taken from the Facebook post of one of our volunteer.

If the blood banks can't accept blood from reputed, licensed blood banks in the city then why should the Government ask for increasing voluntary blood donation at all?

sankalp
October 2013: Raining BombayBloodGroup Requests

Last month total of 13 Bombay blood group requests for 16 units. 2 units were found available off the shelf while 7 donations happened. Other units managed by systematic planning and use of alternatives to blood transfusion therapy.

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Importance of confirming Blood Group

Sankalp helpline gets a minimum of 3 to 4 Bombay blood group requests every month from all parts of the country. With such flowing requests and very few eligible donors available it has become very much a necessity to request donors to donate every three months and motivate more Bombay blood group donors who are not aware about the scarcity and need of this unit.

Herculean Task: Bringing 4 Bombay Negative Donors Together

Usually whenever Sankalp receives blood requests on the helpline, the request gets fulfilled within a week unless operation is scheduled for a later date. But in this one request, the heart surgery of a 9 year old girl was postponed 3 times in 6 months due to various reasons.

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Undue Panic

Handling blood requests at late hours in the night is not new for the Emergency Wing at Sankalp. 19th April 2013 was one such day.  We received A- SDP(Single Donor Platelet) request. 

The patient was suffering from dengue. When a person is affected by dengue, the platelets count usually decreases from lakhs to thousands. In this case, the count at that hour (at 11:30 PM) was less than 10,000 in the patient.  With such a low count, the patient side was informed to arrange two to three A- SDP units.