Sankalp News

Here are the latest news items from us.

Fail Story: How we failed to improve voluntary blood donation at a private hospital based blood bank

Fail Story is a new section in Sankalp Patrika. We often share stories of success with you. We thought that it may be interesting or rather important to share with you the stories of failure that we face. We hope that one of you will find a better solution to the problems we faced. At least the learning we had could be made known  so that the next attempt does not have to discover the problems all over again.

Are we doing enough? Are we doing it right?

Sankalp has been involved in thalassemia management for last 3 years. What started as an initiative with very little prior experience and knowledge has blossomed into a comprehensive thalassemia management and care program. In the last three years we have benchmarked our performance with our won prior results and using the Thalassemia international Federation's guidelines for clinical management as the gold standard to compare against. Centres supported by us have indeed shown vast improvement in the quality of care being given to the thalassemia patients.

Do we really need fresh blood?

In India the demand for fresh blood units  especially in case of cardiac surgeries has been a major challenge for the voluntary blood donation program. Though vast majority of associated clinicians agree that there is no need for so called fresh blood units  but still the hospitals involved in cardiac surgeries continue to demand 'fresh' units.  In such scenarios the blood available off the shelf coming from voluntary blood donors becomes useless for the patient. This also encourages the practice of replacement blood donation.