Taking Disha across Karnataka is an activity that will take some time to materialise. Sankalp however, has made a firm and sedate start to this activity. Phase 1 of the expansion plan is to visit the major medical hubs across Karnataka and understand the ground realities that exist there. With this idea in mind, a Sankalp team left for the coastal belt of Mangalore, Udupi and Manipal following it up with a visit to Mysore.
On 16th January, 2009, the team had a target to visit blood banks and understand what blood banking is in some important cities in this South Western belt of the state. Visit to the coastal region was an important learning to the team. Rigorous planning and fact finding was done to know about the regions and the team took sufficient inputs froom senior blood transfusion specialists across Bangalore to understand which blood banks followed standards that are safe. The team visited 5 blood banks and spoke about the plan to map them into Disha. Most blood banks were happy with the idea and promised to throw full weight behind this initiative. However, initial reports suggest that replacements are the norm of the day in this region. Voluntary blood exists, but only in isolation and only in small packets. The following blood banks were covered in this visit:
1. Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore.
2. Kasturba Medical College, Manipal.
3. Wenlock Hospital, Mangalore.
4. Father Muller Charitable Hospital, Mangalore
5. District Hospital, Udupi
Specifics about the project and the initiative were discussed in detail in each of these and a lot of data related to their way of working was collected. This data will be very significant for the team to have a better understanding and ensure a smoother working.
Mangalore region is one where there is a lot of potential. Many colleges around and certainly over a period of time, percentage of voluntary donations must pick up. In interaction with blood bank staff, it was realised that students are the biggest source of blood there. Just that things need to be planned better to have regular voluntary blood donation drives rather than spurts of such activities.
Added to this, a "mini" Sankalp was born at NITK,(National Institute Of Technology, Karnataka) Surathkal. Volunteers of the Rotaract Club from this institution are active to organise blood donation drives and also cater to some emergency requests. The Sankalp team visited this group and gave them a good understanding of blood banking scenario. This team will be the first emergency team out of Bangalore, and should a unit not be found in any blood bank around the coastal region, they will swing into action under the guidance of Sankalp Bangalore Emergency Wing. Incidentally, NITK also had a plan to organise a blood donation drive the next day. The Sankalp team gave the NITK volunteers a good understanding of the entire process. When reports came in after the drive, it read that more than 250 units of blood were collected. This is something to cheer.
With some good ground covered in a 12 hour span, the Sankalp team moved out of Mangalore with a smile of having Disha take some fine steps towards expansion. The team moved on to the next city.