‘Don’t ban social bodies from holding blood donation camps’

Our Correpondent

Hoshiarpur, August 14

“The need for blood can only be fulfilled by blood donations to save the life of the patients in the hospitals. Awareness and blood donation camps are organised by volunteer organizations in different areas to serve the people in need. Drawing boundaries of state and district for organising Blood Donation Camps is not acceptable.”

Dr Ajay Bagga, the Patron of Punjab chapter of Indian Society of Blood Transfusion and Immunohematology (ISBTI), said in a press conference here. He also added that to ban the social organisations from organising blood donation camps on the basis of state and district boundaries would harm the blood donation campaign.

The Rotary Blood Bank Resource Centre of Chandigarh, with the cooperation of Shiv Sakthi Prabhat Feri Seva Samiti, had organised a blood donation camp on August 12 in Ropar, but the government blood banks said blood donation camps by the NGOs in collaboration with the blood banks of the Chandigarh leaves donors unavailable for the government blood bank.

They said it indicated that the blood donors had more faith in Rotary blood bank. Dr Bagga said the information procured under the RTI National AIDS Control organisation has informed that during the year 2017, 7 lakh units of blood was lost to lack of use in the banks and 6.69 lakh units of blood were similarly lost during the year 2016.

Dr Bagga said the government should felicitate those blood banks which are lying non-functional due to non-usage of blood, so that they can become inspiration for rest of blood banks to improve their functioning.