Sundays have had a different meaning altogether for Project Samraksha, the Thalassemia Day Care Centre at Rashtroothhana Parishat. While the rest of the world enjoys their day off from work, the staff of the blood bank and the day care center put their best foot forward to work on their busiest day of the week. With the intention of causing minimal disruption to education and work for the families of children suffering from thalassemia. Samraksha continues work on the weekend. Individuals who need to come to the centre more often than the others are scheduled to come on Sundays.
(Dr Reshma Srinivas, stationed at Samraksha shares her experience)
A Family from Koppal visited Bangalore. They came to the Samraksha day care for thalassemia, located in the premises of Rashtrotthana Parishat with Rakesh, a two-year-old child. At registration, his father told me that Rakesh is their second child and was diagnosed with thalassemia. He is on regular blood transfusions ever since.
Rakesh has an elder brother Ramesh who is 4-years-old and a younger sister Shweta. As a part of regular questionnaire, I asked them if they are doing fine.
It is well known that children suffering from thalassemia need blood transfusion and iron chelation every month. While the suffering and pain is borne by the child, the financial implications of this regular routine are quite demanding for many families. In the past we have seen that a few families shun the idea of regular management owing to the lack of financial resources.
Since 2011, at our thalassemia day care centres in Bangalore we are looking to make management of thalassemia and not the financial aspect related to it as the point of focus for patients and their families.
Sankalp organized 12 blood donation camps in Sept 2015 collecting 772 units of blood. Syniverse: 3rd camp was organized in Syniverse on 2nd Sept. The company promoted the event very well and arranged fruits for the donors. We saw 87 people turning up for the event with a collection of 75 units of blood. Schnieder Electric: Schnieder Electric organized a camp with Sankalp for the first time at their Bidarahalli location. For publicity, all the LCD screens in company were used.
1st October is celebrated as National Voluntary Blood Donor’s Day in India to mark the birthday of Dr J G Jolly who is believed to have spearheaded the movement to promote Voluntary Blood Donation in the country. Several voluntary organizations across the country marked the day with blood donation drives and other celebrations including felicitation of regular donors. A few blood banks and hospitals organized CMEs. Sankalp too could have organized an event and marked the special day. Instead we chose to do something different.
What do we do as a voluntary organisation when we confront with a problem that affects the donors and the interest of voluntary blood donation as a whole? There are choices. There is the choice to create awareness about the problem and hope that someone will take notice and solve it. The other option is to petition the Government and other stakeholders to try and take the problem up and find answers. Then there is the approach that we took.
