Road accidents push up demand for blood

Hyderabad: Despite a regular pool of blood donors from the student community and office goers from various tertiary sectors, the demand is not being met due to the changing dynamics of diseases and also increasing road accidents, said experts on the eve of World Blood Donor Day on June 14.

The demand is 12 million units in India and the collection is only 9 million units. Of the collected blood, 12 per cent of the blood is wasted due to not being used on time and Transfusion Transmissible Infections like HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, malaria and syphilis.

The infected blood is often drawn at blood donation camps where there are no facilities to test the blood. Dr Suchitra, blood bank officer at Care Hospitals, said, “In a hospital set-up, blood test is done before taking the blood. This is not done in camps and, therefore, the blood tested afterwards. Infected blood can’t be used and it is wasted.”

In some cases, too much of blood is drawn of common blood groups like O and B. Dr Sukesh Kumar, head of the department of Transfusion Medicine at Aware Global Hospitals said, “When blood is stored for too long, the epidemiological pattern changes and that is an indication that there is something going wrong with the blood. These things can be detected because of the technological advances where all blood samples are tested before giving it to the patient.”

While the rules for preserving blood are strict, there are times when “expired” blood is detected. A senior doctor said, “Due to this reason, most of the super-speciality hospitals have their own blood bank. In doing so, the quality is assured. But most of the small hospitals depend on blood banks to supply them with blood and there have been issues of quality, expiry as well as preservation methods.”

While the Drug Control Administration is strict in its checks, there is a need for improvement in terms of not stocking old blood. Dr Rahul C, a senior professor of Transfusion Medicine said, “There is a strong need to define the ‘window period’ for donated blood. At the same time, transfusion safety rests heavily on the health of the donor. To improve donor response, it is very important that all donors must undergo reactive in-screen testing and they must also undergo optimal pre-donation counselling to educate them about the risk of infections.”