Emergency Wing

This month indicates the rising trend of number of blood requests as the summer approaches. In the three weeks of February, there were about 25 blood requests, which included 3 requests inside Karnataka, 1 request for Single Donor Platelet donation and 2 outside Karnataka. Internal structuring of donor databases has started to maintain a single updated database of all the registered donors with Sankalp. Along with the existing database, an updated database from MSRIT Boys Hostel will be maintained for the same.

There were two Bombay Blood group requests. Read about one of them here. The other request was later updated to Sankalp that it was not required. In this case it was for a baby suffering from white jaundice, which recovered soon. :)

MSRMBDS

In January, a blood donation drive was held in Hotel Management. With this drive, we kick off the new year by taking one step further and spreading the message about importance of voluntary blood donation. Following that we had one drive in Dental College. One improvement is the number of enthusiastic donors who walked in this time to donate blood.Once some initial confusions were sorted out, the drive went on smoothly. Apart from that, the team is coming up with newer ideas. For example, internal management of data within the team is being focused upon. With the help of Medical Director of MSR Hospital, we are encouraging some of the non-participating colleges to come join us in the cause of organizing regular drives.

Rakta Kranti Companies

Learning from past mistakes is a key factor which helps in growth. Reaching close to more than 9000+ units collected in the drives Sankalp has organized, we are still in the improvisation mode from the mistakes happening around us. There were three drives in month of February. One at an Organization called Terapanth Sabha Bhavan, second in Logica, third in Moong and a fourth in ARM.

Members at the Terapunth Yuva Sangha drive showed dedication for the cause of blood donation and sent out messages to all its members in a very large number. On the day of the drive about 34units were collected. But the notable fact is that there were no reactions in the drive. Also, the donors who came forward to donate blood were from a wide range of age groups (20years to 60years). Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health (IGI) was the blood bank in the drive. Team Red training at Logica showed results on the day of the drive. About 188 life saviours came forward to donate blood in the drive. IGI and Rashtrothana blood bank were the participating blood banks. Drive at Moong was the first one the company organized with Sankalp. With the efforts of the trained Team Red volunteers, the day of the drive saw about 40% of employees as turnout for drive for the first try with St Johns blood bank participating. 60 units were collected in total. Looking for a long term relationship with the company. ARM drive as always a welcome summer blessing. Spread over 2 days there were 193 units of blood collected by Nimhans, Rashtrothana, IGI blood banks

All drives went on pretty smoothly. With Sankalp's extreme focus on donor care, the results are showing. With 475 units of blood collected, there were less than 7 reactions (~1.5%) and most of them very minor in nature. Keeping in consideration about all this, the drive went on pretty smoothly. These issues are the basis for our motivation to grow as a stronger Blood Donation Organization and we will stop at nothing less than achieving 100% Voluntary Blood Donation.

The registrations have been taken in a new way to reduce redundancy registration in places where Sankalp has organized camps. Thus only the new donors in the camp will be registered, and others will check their previous entries and update information if necessary. Apart from this, a new Company feedback will be started from the forthcoming drives.

Struggling through the problems of the existing system must have something which drives us apart from the cause itself. To quote one of them, it is the effect and effort of Team Red Volunteers. The Team Red is a group of people who take it as their responsibility to spread the message of importance of Voluntary Blood Donation. The effort that this team has been putting in all the three drives has seen some of the impact that we dream about. Cheers people, keep it going!! :)

Coming Up
Drives in EKA, ITPB, REVA.

Sankalp Tech

There are a host of sites that Sankalp makes use of. Practically, all the teams now have their data (internal or external) posted online in one of the websites. The sites were customized, featured and tailored as the team members wanted. :)

One day, all the sites were down. We were informed that our websites were using more than the allotted parameters on the server. Then started the actual maintenance of the sites. The CPU utilization and memory utilization of these sites are now being monitored and all the processes are being made to run efficiently along with the performance. Once the entire procedure was done, the Tech team came up with certain scripts to automate these processes from now on.

Read more about it here.

Rakta Kranti Colleges

A drive was held in Bapuji Polytechnic college, Davangere. Unexpectedly, and to our pleasant surprise about 40 young enthusiastic students came forward to be Team Red Volunteers. :) Finally getting all of them to synchronize and get the final output of a well organized drive took some amount of effort. Since the Blood banks were not invited by taking Sankalp consultation, there were certain problems with following all the standard procedures specified. But due to the presence of our volunteer, some of the issues were taken care of to the best possible extent. About 158 units were collected in the drive and two blood banks participated in the event.

Bellary, Belgaum and Davangere are now equipped to organize a drive after the Team Red trainings were held. Totally 8 colleges participated in the trainings. All the follow up visits to colleges in Bellary, Davangere, Dharwad, Belgaum and Kolar have been completed.

More Team Red trainings are being planned in Hubli, Kolar and Raichur. Following that drives are now being planned in Belgaum, Hubli, Bellary, Kolar and Mysore.

Disha

Promoting the statewide helpline for blood is on the charts in Disha. Sending of stickers for the helpline 9480044444 for various blood banks across the state continued in the last one month. The response was very encouraging. Many Medical Directors called up to enquire about the helpline and understand how patients benefit from the services. After understanding the help that the helpline offers, they stuck the stickers to the walls and we got many more calls. Over the last few weeks the calls coming in from the remote districts have increased multi-fold (exact numbers being processed).

While the calls are pouring in, we have kept a very tight monitoring strategy in place for quality of service. We are doing testing and probing at various levels to identify the loopholes that might be causing the delivery of reduced benefit to the needy.

Daily analysis and reporting is back in action. Soon we will be able to indicate live blood availability numbers on our public interfaces.

30 more hospitals in Bangalore were also visited and encouraged to route their blood requests to the helpline.

In the coming month the target will be to ensure that each of the participating blood bank receive feedback about their stock reporting. Also we will go ahead and network more districts with the helpline soon.

One press clip related to Disha Karnataka helpline was published on 14th February in Vijay Karnataka newspaper (Kannada). It was a short crisp article highlighting all the important aspects about the helpline.

DMMG

Initial talks are over and we have started the specific skill trainings for Disaster Response. In the month of February the two agenda items were Communication Protocol and Code Red.

Communication Protocol This session outlined the comprehensive framework for information exchange in the event of a disaster. The various teams, their intercommunication rules, the back up procedures and the general guidelines which go into making sure that we can give lightning fast response in a deterministic way in the wake of a disaster are the components that were discussed in this training.

Code Red For immediate and effective response to a disaster we have a code that all volunteers must adhere to. This is called Code Red. On receiving the news about the disaster, the volunteers of the organisation receive a code red message. If they choose to participate in the disaster relief, then they are expected to do what it takes to provide prompt and immediate relief without ifs and buts. The framework for this is in place now.

Fire at Carton Building On receiving the news of the disaster we immediately sent one of our volunteers on the spot to get first hand information. We go to know that the building was cleared by then and all patients were shifted to hospitals. We got in touch with the hospitals to understand if there was any need of blood. Thanks to the mighty spirit of the Bangaloreans, we got to here that the blood banks had queues of donors already waiting. No further action was required from our end.

Finance

All the receipts for Project Sparsh have been distributed. Please read more here.

Rakta Kranti Schools

All the schools which were started in the month of January have been completed in the month of February. The list of schools completed are Akai Public School, Matha School and Premiere Bharat Seva Dal.