Association of Voluntary Blood Donors, West Bengal (AVBDWB) organised National Meet on Total Voluntary Blood Programme - Vision 2020 from 23-25th January, 2015 at Kolkata. This is one meet which is looked forward to by voluntary organisation from all over the country.
Recently I was invited to talk to Rotarians in Dhanbad who have been trying to shape up their blood donation related activity. It was very difficult for me to plan what I was going to say - after all, I knew that what they had in mind was a virtual blood bank - or in other words - a list of blood donors. I was to talk to a roomful of people who were skeptical about the blood banks and who were sure that the blood bank does not issue blood when needed.
It was around July last year when we decided to put laziness behind and initiate the Sunday get-together for Thalassemia. There was a situation where several parents wanted to meet us and have discussions about various issues faced by their children.
Sankalp India Foundation has an Emergency Team which works to ensure that people who do not find blood from the blood banks are helped. The team works on corner cases of blood transfusion medicine and extremely rare blood group requests. The team has been handling BBG requests for last 6 years.
The book of Thalassemia International Federation’s guidelines on the management of transfusion dependant thalassemia is an essential resource for anyone involved in care giving for patients suffering from thalassemia.
The followings are the news and updates from Sankalp India Foundation for the month of October 2014.
11 blood donation drives were organized in October collecting 926 units.
On November 14, 2011 Sankalp's India foundation supported the first thalassemia day center at Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, Bangalore. Cerebrating 3 years of fight against thalassemia.
On 13th September 2014, Disha the blood help-line will be celebrating the 8th year of continuous service. Since the launch on the evening of 13th September 2006 at the Raj Bhawan by the then governor of Karnatataka Sh. T N Chaturvedi, the help-line has grown into a reliable, single window access to blood for all parts of Karnataka.
The news of a child being born with thalassemia devastates the family. More grueling is the struggle to find the way ahead for disease management. Each family was forced to wage their own battle and find their way through. The situation is most difficult for the poor and the illiterate parents.
