The entire worforce @ Sankalp follows one mantra. Looking for blood? Call 9480044444. That is the number of the Disha helpline. The helpline guides people to the nearest place where safe blood is available. But sometimes there is no way, there is no place either near or far where the unit is available. What then. Is there that someone or something that can help? Yes, there is an emergency wing of Sankalp India Foundation Since the inception of the organisation, the wing has been doing wonders to be the ray of hope to thousands of people. It's easy to sit back and write this update, but when you are thrown in with the responsibility to make sure safe blood is available at the right time for a patient fighting for his/her life there comes the challenge. In the last 7 years, the volunteers have built up a good practical knowledge of blood emergencies and are now easily capable of dealing with extreme situations. Here is a snapshot of what happened in October
October 2010 for the Emergency Wing
After a hectic past few months due to dengue, Sankalp's emergency wing seem to be having a fairly comfortable schedule with 3-4 emergency request on a day. However, the interesting thing to note here is that dengue has not really taken a back seat. In the month of October the team successfully handled 132 emergency blood requests. This included:
32 Random Platalets request and 23 SDP Requests
55 Negative group Request
3 Bombay group Request
104 Requests were from Bangalore
24 were Non Bangalore Karnataka Blood Requests
4 non karnataka ie from Chennai, Hyderabad and Vellore
As you see it's not just the number, it is the variety of the requests handled. be it SDP (Single Donor Platelet) requests, requests for negative grouops or for the rarest of rare Bombay group the emergency team is there to handle them. A lot of requests also have come in from regions outside Bangalore, showing the presence of the organisation across the state.
The EW Information Mangement System
A tremendous challenge to the team over the years has been to see how effectively can information be captured and reused when blood requests either of the same category or from the same regions keep popping up again and again. Be in the technology era it is quite feasible we do it hte e-way. That is what is done. Joining hands with the sankalp tech team wa a wise decision for the EW volunteers. Now the EW has a complete information management system which captures essential information related to blood banks, unique details of blood requests, people who will help, donors who are up and ready to donate and a lot more relevant information. The team also maintains end to end details of every blood request.
Pan Karnataka Operations
The EW has also been taking measures to strengthen it's presence across the state of Karnataka. IN association with the Rakta Kranti Karnataka team, the EW organises blood donor registration drives in colleges across the state. The idea is to build up a relevant blood donor database in every major medical hub of the state. Localites from the region, specially students are the default choice. Such events have been held in Bellary Shimoga, Kolar, Hubli, Raichur. The team also digitalises these databases and also the list of blood donors from each of Sankalp's drives, be it in bangalore or outside. Special steps have been taken by the team to reach out to Bombay group blood donors and build up a relationship with them. In the month of October, blood donor registration drives were held at Sahyadri Science and Sahayadri Art & Commerece College in Shimoga where 225 blood donors pledged to help out in emergencies. On the very same day another team was upto the task in Kolar, registering blood donors at GVIT. 292 blood donos promised help in emergenies there. Most importantly these students now know that there is an organisation that works for blood
The Emergency Wing of the organisation is surely taking giant steps towards being the best in the nation!