13th September 2008, CTC Disha completed its two years. This initiative which was started to make blood search easier and simpler in Bangalore has made a difference to the blood banking system in Bangalore. Today any person looking for blood in Bangalore just needs to dial a single number 080-1062 to know the blood statistics in 13 standard blood banks in Bangalore.
In the last one year Disha has undergone many changes and grown well to an extent. 5 new blood banks namely Sushrutha Voluntary Blood Bank, Victoria, Indira Gandhi Institute Of Child Care Blood bank, NIMHANS and BGS global have joined us for this cause.
In order to make sure more number of people are aware of this number and are benefited from it, we started the CTC Disha publicity in February 2008, wherein we visited hospitals and put up the posters and stickers about the number and also made sure that the hospital staff hospital staff were also aware about this number. We also put up stickers in BMTC (around 100 ) buses which was a hit. We also approached the media to help us spread awareness about this number.
This stretch of publicity was a success as the number of calls to the number increased from an average of 4-5 calls per days to an average of 10-12 calls per day.
On the anniversary day, the Sankalp volunteers visited the CTC office where we had a good interaction with the Response Centre Executives and the management staff of CTC. We learnt about other projects of CTC like giving first aid training to the schools, offices etc. We had a discussion about 108 coming to Bangalore, the various improvements needed in service, infrastructure and the future plans for Disha. Hoping for many more successful years.