This is daily ritual for patients' relatives at this 700-bed hospital for the past six months. The reason? The hospital's blood bank does not have a licence to operate.

The bank failed to qualify for the licence after the Food & Drugs Control Administration (FDCA) of the health department ordered blood banks to implement stringent norms, following a Supreme Court directive.

Some 25 other blood banks, run by the government or by voluntary organisations, have failed to qualify for the licence.

But then most hospitals are making do without blood banks, albeit at great inconvenience to patients.

``We have tied up with the Red Cross Blood Bank and one Adarsh Pathology Laboratory to cope with the situation,'' said resident medical officer Dr Sarlaben Shah of the ESIS General Hospital. So have many others.

Hospital staff admit that there is great inconvenience caused to patients' relatives. One of them said, ``For planned surgery, we know the quantity of blood needed, and send the donors (patients' relatives) to these blood banks in the morning. After their blood is tapped, the ambulance comes back with the blood bottles.'' He said that the donors had to wait long hours at the bank or at the hospital, waiting for the ambulance that takes them. Often the ambulance is held up for other work.

FDCA commissioner S.P. Adesara, however, says that the ESIS blood bank was not permitted only to tap blood from donors. ``They are not barred from storing it.'' While the ESIS blood bank stores some bottles of blood, the amount is never sufficient, and the daily morning ride of patients' relatives continues.

If planned surgeries are handled that way, emergencies requiring large quantities of blood find the hospital staff throwing up their hands. ``In case the patient needs more than five or six bottles, we send him to the New Civil Hospital,'' said the hospital employee.

Dr Nitin Vora, deputy director of the hospital, said that all cases requiring ``super-speciality treatment'' were being referred to the New Civil Hospital.

Dr Vora said he was hopeful the crisis would be resolved soon. ``It is true the blood-bank does not have a license, but things are in progress.''He said the department had forwarded papers to the public works department (PWD) for renovation of the existing blood bank so that it qualifies for the licence, but did not say how long it would take to complete the work.

At the blood bank there little renovation has been done. According to a hospital source, construction to convert the blood bank into a seven-room complex has come to a halt since November. Now, the work has been handed over from the PWD to the National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC).

The conditions for blood banks to follow are: they should have an area of at least 1,200 square feet, with at least seven rooms of not less than 10 x 10 square feet.

The rooms are for medical examination, blood collection, grouping and cross-matching, ELISA testing, washing and sterilising bottles and equipment, and one where blood donors can wait for their turn. At least two of the rooms are to be air-conditioned.