Karnataka needs 0.6 million units of blood every year. The state has more than 2 million students studying in professional colleges across the length and breadth of the state. Yet the state has only 60 - 65% of blood being made available through voluntary donations.
Perhaps the facts mentioned above would have startled you. The troubled and startled the Rakta Kranti team of Sankalp for years. But after 3 years of ground level college visits in close to 200 colleges in some of the major medical hubs and collecting close to 2000 units of blood in regions including Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum, Raichur, Mysore, Davangere, Gulbarga, Kolar etc some answers have come up. Some of the primary reasons for this situation are
- 1. Most blood donation drives are restricted to donations from NSS and NCC volunteers, who are about 50-100 in number, even though colleges have 500 or more students.
- 2. Drives are planned on days of national or regional importance leading to periods of both extreme shortage and excess availability.
- 3. Preparedness of colleges in terns of men and material is usually not upto the mark, information and publicity campaigns are usually missing which together leads to poorly managed drives with a very low turnout.
- 4. Missing focus on quality and safety standards leads to dissatisfied donors who are never again interested to donate.
- 5. Many colleges look at blood donation drives as a burden on the overall annual timetable and get into it to a “let’s do it if we can accommodate it” mindset.
College blood donation drives in Karnataka needs basic restructuring at the planning level. That is when Sankalp Rakta Kranti decided to do something to address this at a larger scale rather than sort this out with colleges individually.
It was then felt that a series of workshops across the state needs to be conducted over the next 12 - 18 months where colleges from specific districts, universities are targeted to bring about a change. These workshops were to involve a small volunteer set and a faculty incharge from every college, people from the blood banking community, and Sankalp. The aim is simple, make colleges aware and conduct planned, quality compliant and safe blood donation drives in every district that shall address local blood needs.