"B-ve" blood case in Mysore

Case Details:

Name: Lat*& Mobile: 93********
Group: B -ve
Email-ID: lat&^%*(@yahoo.com
Donor: Dev Kanchen Vasantharajan
Date: 21st September 2007
Date of Donation: 23rd September 2007

(personal information of patient masked as per Organizational policies)

Description:

It was a Friday afternoon in office. Rajat asked me whether I can find someone who can donate “B -ve”. He told me that a lady in Mysore is searching for one unit of “B -ve” for her mother’s surgery and she is searching for a web based donor as she doesn’t know anyone in Mysore. I confirmed from Rajat that whether he had contacted the person (which he had) before asking me. I got the contact details from him.

First, I posted this request on Bulletin Board(a place where people from Infosys can exchang information quickly). Then I started the search for a donor from the blood bank portal in our intranet. My search yielded 96 results. My next question was whether should I mail everyone or on what basis should I filter out the donors. I caught hold of the employee ids. I mailed 20 of them whose employee ids were greater than mine as they would be the freshers or younger people. I waited for reply for another half an hour. Then mailed again another 20 people. I did not get any reply from any of them.

I did not take it that seriously.

When I came to office on Monday i.e. 24th September 2007 and opened my mailbox I found that 6 people had responded to my mail on Friday after I had left for Bangalore. Two of them had given me link to the blood bank portal in our intranet. Three of them had replied that they were not fit enough. And one (Dev Kanchen Vasantharajan) had replied that he had called the person and he would be going to meet the person at 7:00 on Friday.

I sent an acknowledgement to the people who had replied. I did not know whether Dev Kanchen Vasantharajan had donated or not. I called him up. He told me that he donated on Sunday. I thanked him. He asked how I came to know about the blood request. I gave him a little intro about Sankalp and gave him the link to Sankalpindia.net.

I was very happy when I came to know that I was a small part of all these transactions although I did not give that much effort to it.

Analysis:

Strong points

• Getting to know about the genuinity of the case by confirming from Rajat whether he had contacted the person.
• Getting the contact information from Rajat before proceeding to mail the donors

• No 100% commitment to find a donor
• It was a “beating around in the bushes” kind of effort.
• Finally I did not ask the donor whether he donated whole blood or only a component.
• There was no acknowledgement from the person who got the blood immediately after receiving blood.