An exclusive portal for people who have the Bombay Blood Group was launched on October 2nd 2012. This is the first of it’s kind platform which will bring together all the individuals with this rare blood group and seek to address their concerns on blood requirement.
In the first ever Bombay Blood Group donors meet which was organised on 1st July 2012, the community felt the need to set up a common platform for interaction, record keeping and information sharing. Careful deliberation with the regular donors helped draw the wireframe of the portal that was to come.
The second meeting marked the inauguration of the information portal - www.bombaybloodgroup.org. This marks the beginning of a new era of education, information and coordination for people with BBG.
The site will be enrolling people Bombay Blood Group from across the nation.
For the Donors
A large number of individual groups maintaining databases of the Bombay Blood Group donors. But the problem is that with each new request, all donors of this group are called through one channel or the other. The donors undergo lot of emotional stress, specially because the needy families plead them to donate blood. The regular donors plan to keep the information of their last donation updated on this platform and divert all incoming blood requests to the platform. Gradually this should ensure that only the eligible donors are approached for donation.
The other issue is that of lack of information. Several donors shared experiences when they came across people who think having Bombay Blood Group is some kind of a disorder. There has been a lot of activity relating to Bombay Blood Group when it comes to emergency needs. However, there is very little credible and well structured information available about this phenotype. The platform will bring together all pieces of information that is of relevance to the community.
Thanks to Jehova's witnesses, a lot of advancements have taken place in the field of bloodless surgeries. The same advance techniques can be put to use in case of patients with BBG to reduce the need for transfusion. Over last few years, several organisations have been promoting the use of:
- pre-operative autologous donation
- intra-operative red cells salvage
- double red cells donation using apheresis technique
- use of EPO
and several other techniques. The site will serve the need to educate the Bombay Blood Group community about these options.
For the Needy and the Blood Banks
The patients in need of Bomaby Blood Group will be able to post their requests on the platform either on website or by a call. The system allows for capturing of all Bombay Requests across India and track them. The efforts of the individuals and organisations (who help find BBG) will be streamlined and clear status of the need be highlighted for all to see. This will bring about greater synergy and effectiveness. The system will achieve it’s goal when each needy patient gets the blood units from the best suited donor in the fastest possible time.
The system will also bring together all possible strategies and options that are being employed on various levels to make blood available to the patient.
The Irony and the Solution
From July to September, in 3 months, Sankalp India Foundation got requests for 20 BBG units for 11 different patients. In the same duration, while there was a nationwide search for donors, 2 units of BBG expired on shelves in various blood banks of the country. The problem comes from the fact that the blood banks do not have a mechanism to let the community know that they have a BBG unit on their shelves.
Sankalp’s Bombay Blood Group Alert network had shown significant results in utilizing the BBG blood units which get collected from voluntary donors who are unaware of their rare phenotype. Sometimes the patients recover from medical emergencies without needing as much blood as was anticipated and the units which got donated for them also find their place on the shelves. The platform will take the BBG Alert network to the next level ensuring that the blood banks can immediately notify the nation if they have a unit of BBG on shelf.
The platform also has built-in forums for donors to participate and discuss related stuff. The news section of the platform ensures that any news related to Bombay Group posted in the world is made available to the donors registered in the site.
The aim is make this platform to be the one-stop solution to connect and manage Bombay Group donors and requests. Hence we urge all members of the blood banking community across India to actively make use of this system. The portal link is http://www.bombaybloodgroup.org