After having an eventful day at Mangalore, the Sankalp Disha expansion team moved on to visit Bangalore's sister city of Mysore. Again sufficient background work and inputs from senior transfusion specialists from Bangalore meant that the plan was well in place for another day of extreme buzzing.
The team visited 5 blood banks in Mysore city. Again as seen in Mangalore, Mysore thrives on replacement donations. Blood donation drives do happen, but only at aperiodic intervals and in a way don not cater to meet perennial requirements of the city. The Sankalp team visited the following blood banks in the city and invited them to be a part of the Karnataka wide expansion of Disha.
1. Vikram Hospital Blood Bank.
2. J.S.S. Hospital Blood Bank
3. K.R. Hospital Blood Bank
4. Rotary Blood Bank at Chandrakala Hospital
5. B.G.S. Apollo Hospital Blood Bank.
A majority of these blood banks have expressed their willingness to be a part of the helpline and make a difference. Furthermore, the blood banks also disacussed with the Sankalp team as to how Sankalp can play a role in getting camps in Mysore and making a bigger impact on the blood banking practices there. Sufficient learnings of the geographical locations of colleges, companies etc have been documented by the Sankalp team, and certainly in the future there must be a way of having some blood donation drives there.Requests for blood pour into the major blood banks of Mysore not only form within the city, but from surrounding rural belts as well.
Another important thing to learn for the Sankalp team was the efficient usage of the miedia, specially the Radio. Blood Banks communicate requests for blood on the radio and donors come in. Although the Bangalore emrgency wing is well aware of this idea and have made use of it before, it is not taken up as aggressively as it is done here, thanks to some other efficient methods followed by the team.
Again, the operation looked to be well on track based on the planning done earlier. In a span of 8 hours, Mysore city looks well mapped. Follow up visits and discussions will be needed, but this seems to be a start in the right direction.
With Mangalore and Mysore well mapped now, it certainly looks like Disha is getting wiser as it grows old. The Sankalp team will visit more districts in the coming months to map the entire state under Disha.