NEW DELHI, January 28: The blood donation camps that the government is harping on to augment the availability of blood are nothing more than a fire-fighting solution to a serious problem which has remained unsolved for several decades.According to the Indian Association of Blood Banks (IABB), since such camps are temporary affairs, they achieve nothing to create a committed cadre of blood donors who could be relied on to provide a regular supply of blood.The answer to meet the annual shortfall of about 79,000 units of blood in Delhi (collections in 1996 were 2.71 lakh units, against a demand of about 3.5 lakh units of blood), therefore, is regular motivational programmes that could help create such a cadre and eliminate the very need for professional donors.
Kulbhushan Arora, general secretary of the Voluntary Blood Donors' Association (VBDA) sees one such captive cadre in replacement donors, who already meet as much as 58.4 per cent of the total demand for blood.
``The fact that they choose to donateblood for their relatives or friends in need doesn't make them any less committed volunteers. If these people are motivated to donate blood just once more every year, the whole crisis could be resolved,'' he suggests.
The government, however, is yet to set its own house in order. Despite the fact that the thrust has now shifted entirely to the voluntary blood donors, nothing has been done to actually motivate them and make them feel them important. For any committed volunteer, donating blood at any government blood bank can, in fact, be quite a disgusting experience, as Jasbir Singh and Rajiv Chaddha testify.
Businessmen and regular donors registered with the VBDA, they responded to a distress call early this month for blood donation by an autorickshaw driver, whose wife was admitted at AIIMS with cancer and urgently needed six units of blood.
``The staff was so rude and discourteous that the whole enthusiasm of working for a noble cause evaporated within minutes,'' Singh recalls.According to Singh, thenurse on duty first created a big fuss about the shoes that he was wearing and then disappeared after putting the needle for bleeding. After they had donated blood, the staff didn't even bother to give the mandatory donor cards and the refreshments and, instead, rudely shooed them away.
The patient requiring emergency transfusion got blood in time, but a committed cadre of voluntary donors lost its two members. Dr Jeewan Jha, director of health services in Delhi Government, last week detailed the government's action plan for motivation and recruitment of donors and appointment of officers and social workers for the motivational programme.The VBDA has embarked on another ambitious plan to hold the blood grouping camps, so that those who come forward to know their blood group could be simultaneously motivated to donate blood at least once every year.
``A majority of people do not even know their blood group and are always interested in knowing it. Therefore, we will take the testing kits to corporate andgovernment offices and offer testing free facilities. Even if we manage to turn 10 per cent of them into voluntary donors, our job will be done,'' Arora says.
The IABB has also chalked out a detailed programme for ``enrolling'' regular blood donors. ``All such alternative arrangements should have been made during the two-year period that the Supreme Court order had allowed before the ban on professional blood donations came in force. Now if the shortage continues, the illegal blood trade might go underground,'' says V.B. Lal of the IABB.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
