One fine evening, Few of the volunteers of Sankalp emergency wing received a call. A patient in Gulbarga urgently needed AB- blood. Gulbarga is one of the remotest places in Karnataka with very little blood awareness, and finding a donor there was a tough challenge. The blood banks of Gulbarga and its neighboring districts (Bijapur, Bidar, Raichur) were running dry! The volunteers were left with a very few options-
One of the unique characteristics of Sankalp is the fact that all volunteers are not from the medical community. Stumped? Almost all of the 30 volunteers who work on various aspects in the filed of blood are engineers!. Somehow even though the self learning curve is pretty high amongst the volunteers, there will be those strange topics which will still linger as why what and how.
The emergency wing of Sankalp are always on their toes attending to emergency blood requests. Requests for rare blood groups, from places not heard of and more. All these have become a part of their daily routine. Helpling people find the right unit of blood at the right time has been the overall objective, and the team does it efficiently well. For the record in 7 years since it's existence not a single request for blood was dropped.
One more blood request was catered! One more life was saved! The volunteers of Sankalp emergency wing had one more story to tell!
Adding impetus to our plans for an extension throughout the state of Karnataka is a donor registration programme being designed by the Emergency Wing volunteers of Sankalp. These volunteers take up blood requests from all corners of Karnataka and at times need to ask people to donate blood to satisfy the request.
Sankalp is organizing a training on advance topics in blood transfusion medicine for all the volunteers. Dr Sundar from NIMHANS Blood Bank has very kindly agreed to help the volunteers understand the science behind blood donation in a better way.
It is one thing if a person dies of an incurable disease. It is another thing if a person dies in spite of medical expertise being available to save him and yet some other constraints preventing the treatment from getting through.
1st March, 2009- It was a fine Sunday evening, to be spent in the college canteen catching up on the latest gossip, over tea. It was then, that an engineering student, a volunteer of the Sankalp emergency wing received a call. She listened with rapt attention and sprang into action.
A pregnant woman; expected to deliver anytime soon; was in urgent need of blood. The patient's name was Sapna and she was admitted in a government hospital.
Before H1N1 took the limelight by spreading unknown terror in the minds of people, already there was a silent killer on the prowl. Dengue, the much prevalent disease which unfortunately got very less attention, had been making itself more pronounced in the medical field in the past two months. There was a time in these two months when almost all the requests were for platelets units or Single Donor Platelets (SDP) to help the patient suffering from extremely low platelet count due to this disease.
BLOOD PLATELETS ARE REQUIRED IN THE TREATMENT OF MANY DEADLY DISEASES
A sankalp to fight dengue
This is an article about the importance of Single Donor Platelet Apheresis (SDP).
Sankalp has been busy all through the month of February. And the mother wing of Sankalp is no different. The number of blood requests in the entire month is 27. It includes 4 out station requests and 2 aphaeresis requests. Though most of them we resolved without donations got done, around 4 of the requests were satisfied by getting donations done.
We are in urgent need of Bombay blood group donors for a lady named Bharti who has to undergo delivery but her Hemoglobin level is very low. As of now her situation is very critical and at least 5 units of blood will required to be transfused before her delivery. She is being admitted to MS Ramaiah Hospital, Bangalore. The Lady's family is poor and uneducated to help themselves. Willing Bombay Blood Group donors can contact us at +91-9886064563 or mail us at sankalp.admin@gmail.com
