Emergency Wing

Let’s share a scenario. A person is anemic with a Hb of 9 gm/dl and brought in for a surgical procedure. The doctors agree that the chances of bleeding are low and yet to be on a safer side they request for a unit of blood to be kept ready.

29th November 2018, Bangalore

Mr Chandrakanth Acharya is a voluntary blood donor and a donor motivator who is close to completing 100 donations with 32 single donor platelets donations and 1 stem cell donation.

One would often wonder how Sankalp’s emergency team manages to handle a multitude of request of Bombay blood group day after day.

Just within June the organisation got 19 blood requests for Bombay group patients. These were requests for 34 units of blood with 26 requests indicating the need for immediate transfusion.

Maternal mortality continues to be a significant challenge across the developing countries and particularly relevant to India. Post-partum haemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal death. Tranexamic acid is a widely available and inexpensive drug which is routinely used for trauma patients to reduce death due to bleeding.

On 23 December 2016, an incredible feat was achieved when units of extremely rare Bombay Negative blood group were transported from India to Sri Lanka for a patient fighting cancer.

Recently, we had a situation where a pregnant woman who was close to delivery was detected with Bombay blood group. She was shifted to Bangalore because the local doctors were uncomfortable handling the situation. The lady had haemoglobin on 12 gm/dl and it was then that it was discovered that the patient had extremely low platelets as well. The doctors decided to go for caesarean operation and told the family that the situation of the lady was extremely rare and critical.

On 10th January 2016 we had the 5th Bombay blood group donor meet - the get together of the every special people who have the Bombay blood group. The meeting provides a unique opportunity for people with this rare blood group to come together and deliberate upon issues related to the donation, requests and management of Bombay blood group. The regular donors are happy to see each other and the volunteers who they interact with telephonically. It also enables the new members of the community to feel greater comfort in company of many people who share their blood group.

It's always a challenge to make available adequate quantity of rare blood groups. Whenever there is request for Bombay blood group, our emergency team explores all alternatives to blood transfusion before proceeding to organise for blood donations. The medical condition, the alternatives for transfusions which fit into the scenario and whether or not any alternative was used eventually is documented for each request. We recently analysed 40 of the Bombay blood group requests the organisation received last year.