The dengue infections have reached their peak in Bangalore. We have scores of patients around the city receiving treatment for the same. A direct impact of this is the increase in workload of the Sankalp Emergency Team.
Normally after a good blood doonation drive we try to sit back for a while believing that the units collected in the drive will be available to the patients. However, this season it is different. On Saturday 17th July, we had more than an hour long session when the phone hardly was put away. We had more than 6 blood requests - all for platelets - and all of them for multiple units of platelets. The city is seeing the worst crunch for platelets. The poor staff at the call centre is reporting nil stocks for platelets for most part of the day and simply forwarding the requests to be handled as emergency. And for the emergency team, the challange of ensuring timely supply of platelets is becoming a bigger challange with each passing day.
Although all reports indicate that the city is running at possibly the lowest levels of stocks for certain blood components, it is not that Sankalp is just complaining about it. Over the 2 month period from June 2010 to July 2010, Sankalp organised multiple blood donation drives with more than 1100 units of blood being collected. A million thanks to all the organisers and donors for standing up to the challenge. Here is a brief note on all the various camps held with different organisations.
The World Blood Donor Day is celebrated on a world-wide scale on 14th June. This time Sankalp has taken the initiative to organize a Blood Donor Week 
. 
On the 22nd of May this year, Sankalp India Foundation celebrated being 7 years old. To mark this milestone, a small event was organized at MSRIT. Well wishers, parents of volunteers, members from the blood banking community, friends, and people from organizations with whom we work were all part of the event.
