Think of yourself being asked to arrange 5 units of O negative blood for one of your friends at 11:00 PM at night.. Just for a moment give it serious thought..
People who come along with patients go through extreme amount of mental agony and pain when they start searching for blood. Many of them do not even belong to the city. they know nothing here, no place, no relatives, no friends..
If sometime back you were asked to search for blood, first thing that you would have to do is to run from pillar to post finding the contact numbers of the blood banks. And even in case you find it, you will have to go through numerous attempts of trying to reach the blood banks and have them pick up the ringing phone before you can talk to them. Pray and wish that you know Local Language(Kannada) else you have a thin chance of being able to communicate properly with blood bank. Sometimes blood is available. But the blood bank would have reminded you to arrange for replacement donors when you come. So, there you stand. The patient wanting blood. The Blood Bank with blood in store. But, you will not get it unless you somehow convince an equal number of people to go and replace blood. But things are changing.. People are calling a single toll free number to look for blood i.e. 1062. The messages and ending their forward journey at 9880132850(Sankalp helpline). The blood banks are maintaining stocks. There is an increase in Voluntary donations reducing the pressure for replacement. Our work is showing some small initial results.. And these will grow with your support. Only a person who has actually gone through this pain understands how helpless it feels. It adds to the problems that come apart from this when the person is hospitalized. Even for people who do have some time to search for blood, even for the educated lot things are not much better. People sent SMS's which did nothing but circulate, people sent mails, which were blankly forwarded, people called their friends and relatives only to find that most do not come up to help..