Rakta Kranti
In the month of November 2014 Sankalp India Foundation organised 11 blood donation camps where 976 individuals came forward to donate blood and 775 units of blood were collected. The month of November traditionally has several large blood donation camps in the city. We timed the blood donation drives to take care of the small pockets of shortage. Sankalp salutes the spirit of voluntary blood donation at the technology hub of Bangalore.
Lucent
The first drive of the month was organised at Lucent. Lucent has been regularly supporting the cause of voluntary blood donation in association with Sankalp. In-spite of the un-availability of the regular venue for the blood donation camp, the organisation supported the cause to the extent possible. 87 donors came forward to donate blood while 77 units were collected. As usual there was very good support from the company.
Concentrix
On 6th November the first drive with Concentrix was organised by Sankalp. In all 51 donors came forward to donate 40 units of blood.
MTR Foods
Two blood donation camps were organised on 7-8 November 2014 at 2 locations of MTR foods. As a result of meticulous publicity 175 donors came forward to donate blood and 152 units of blood were collected. The organisation put in a lot of effort to encourage workers in the plant to come forward to donate blood with minimum disruption to work. There were people in late thirties and early forties who had never got a chance to donate before and were very happy to donate blood for the very first time.
ITPB
The regular blood donation drives were organised at ITPB on the 10-11th November 2014. There are few organisations which organise 3-4 blood donation drives a year. Each component including publicity and arrangements for the drive are extremely smooth and well synchronised. In this drive 180 people came forward to donate blood while 114 units of blood were collected. Hat’s off to Applied Materials and Ascendas for supporting the event.
FedEx
On 15th November 2014 the blood donation drives were organised at the FedEx offices in Bangalore by Sankalp. 52 blood donors came forward to donate blood and 41 units were collected. The drive saw excellent participation with quite a few first time blood donors. The organisation believes that more can be done and next time they have planned more elaborate publicity campaign.
Infosys BPO
The 10th blood donation drive at Infosys BPO was organised by Sankalp on 26th November 2014. As usual the event say enthusiastic participation with 168 blood donors coming forward to donate blood while 145 units were collected. The enthusiastic participation of the donors was overwhelming for the space. Next time the drive would be planned at a larger venue to accommodate more donors.
AMD
AMD has always supported the cause of voluntary blood donation wholeheartedly. With the strong publicity campaign organised by the volunteers a lot of regular as well as first time donors came forward to donate blood. On 27th November 2014 the 14th blood donation camp was organised at AMD where 100 donors came forward to donate blood and 79 units of blood were collected. Electronic donor registration was used in the drive.
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On 28th November the third blood donation drive was organised by Sankalp. The company volunteers had done a great job at publicity. As a result 80 blood donors came forward to donate blood and 55 units were collected.
Faurecia
The very first blood donation drive at Faurecia was organised on 28th November. 83 individuals volunteered to donate blood and 72 units of blood were collected. There was very good support from the company and excellent publicity for the blood donation camp was done. The MD of the company himself donated and was very interested in the campaign.
The upcoming month is a big challenge from the voluntary blood donation perspective. The fact that the voluntary blood donation falls towards the end of the year is a challenge which we hope to rise up. A series of blood donation drives have been planned which will ensure that the city continues to get regular blood supply during the critical shortage period.
Thalassemia Day Care
The Thalassemia Day Care Centre at Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health has 198 visits with a total of 274 units of blood transfused to the children. the average pre-transfusion hemoglobin of the children improved after the festive month to 8.4 gm/dl. A large number of children were also due for the ferritin and other medical tests in November and the same was organised. Special focus was laid on identification of children who had not completed their Hepatitis B vaccination and the same was administered.
At Samraksha, We had 168 visits with 202 transfusions. The emphasis at this time has been on preserving the spleen of the children. Hydroxyurea has shown very positive outcomes when it comes to reducing the spleen and liver sizes besides reducing the blood transfusion requirement and the ferritin levels. The children on hydroxyurea have shown twice as much fall in their ferritin levels as other children. At Samraksha we are also nearing the completion of the socio-economic evaluation.
In the mean time the preparations for transplants of the 3 children we are supporting are going on smoothly. For one child money has been organised while the same is still being done for the other two children. Starting now we aim at having at least bed in the Bone Marrow Transplant unit with a Sankalp supported patient for transplant.