A 2 day hands on program for health care professionals involved in thalassemia management

24-25th February, Bangalore

By timely intervention we may save a lot of complications and transfusions.

In our blood donation drives these days we have begun to capture details of deferrals to analyze and assess the reasons in greater detail. But even before that there's one trend that is pretty obvious and quite disturbing. A huge percentage of women donors are unfortunately anemic leading to them being turned down.

Rakta Kranti: The Blood Revolution

A total of 7 drives were organised. 453 units of blood were collected. 15 donors had an adverse reaction which is about 3.3% of total donations. The deferral rate was 10.65%.

An insight into the real problems that confront thalassemia management.

Since the beginning of this century, the availability of oral chelation therapy has enhanced to opportunity to improve overall survival and quality of life of patients suffering from thalassemia. However, are we adequately monitoring the overall survival associated with management of thalassemia? This is crucial because it may help identify the gaps in the delivery of healthcare to the patients.

The first bone marrow transplantation (BMT) for thalassemia was performed in 1980, since than over 4.000 have been done, so what do we know about people who have undergone BMT many years back?

It’s just about a year since we decided to take a big step forward to work towards setting up of our bone marrow transplantation unit. In the month of February we completed the 15th transplant at our center. Larger number of patients are seeking care and management within our network of centers and the queue of patients waiting for transplantation is steadily increasing. Thalassemia poses an enormous challenge to the society and defeating it will require an equally large response. It’s time to build upon our initial success and experience.