Sankalp News

Let us see the events as they unfolded in the month of October.

Rakta Kranti - Bangalore

Sankalp organized 9 blood donation drives in October collecting 777 units in Bangalore.

The question that we must ask ourselves: Are we selecting the right donors?

On 30th October 2013, Dr Nalini Ambady, a Stanford professor of Indian origin succumbed to leukaemia after a yearlong fight with the disease.

Dr Prasanna, the Blood Bank Medical Officer of Victoria Hospital, Bangalore had a hard time in the last week of October. As many as 5 different individuals/organizations wanted to organize a blood donation drive on 1 November - the day of Kannada Rajyotsava. The Medical Officer says that despite him requesting some of them to reschedule the drives to a later date; none were even considering it. Emotions related to the day ran high. Eventually the blood bank agreed to do one drive and informed the others that they were currently too busy and sufficiently stocked!.

Emergency Wing

Handling 21 emergency request in a month is not at all a difficult task for the Emergency Team but if out of every two requests, one turns out to be a dengue then there is a much daunting task at hand. Sankalp volunteers are not doctors or but their experience spanning across 10 years helps them to judge whether or not platelets is required. The choice between Random Donor Platelets (RDP) and Single Donor Platelets (SDP) is left to the doctor.

In 2006, Karnataka became the first state in India to have a single point of contact for blood information access. The safest blood banks of the state were embraced the idea of transparency and were networked to a single channel.