News and Updates from May 2015

Rakta Kranti As expected, the month of May was hard on blood banks with fading blood stocks. This meant that the demand for camps was more and hence the RK wing of Sankalp was busy in planning and getting in more drives. As many as 19 blood donation drives were organised through the month bringing in some relief in the difficult period. 1609 units of blood were collected in these camps. Wipro Technologies organised 3 blood donation drives in few locations in Mysore and Bangalore as part of their annual commitment to help children with Thalassemia. Driven by Wipro Cares, the social wing of Wipro, teams from Mysore facility, EC123 and SJP1 facilities supported blood donation drives. While 113 units of blood were collected by JSS Hospital at Mysore, 110 units were collected by Victoria Hospital, 129 units were collected by Nimhans and 109 by ESI in the Bangalore drives. The commitment of Wipro towards voluntary blood donation is worth an applause. In all 461 units were collected in 4 drives. Robert Bosch Engineering & Business Services Limited also organised blood donation drives in the month of May at 3 locations across Bangalore. Huge donor queues were seen throughout the day at each location. At one of the locations, more than 50 donors had to be sent back requesting them to donate in a later camp at a different facility. Good publicity had ensured that message had reached almost all associates effectively. 426 units of blood were collected by teams from Bowring and Victoria hospitals in these drives. 4 companies that regularly support us with voluntary blood donation drives are AMD, Applied Materials, WNS and Aegis. In the month of May all these organizations heeded to the call of help and supported the cause of voluntary blood donation immensely. Again each of these drives saw committed efforts by the admin and HR teams in ensuring a smooth drive. 58 units of blood were collected at AMD by Bowring Hospital, 84 units were collected at Applied Materials by Victoria Hospital, 109 units were collected by Rashtrothana at WNS. Blood donation drives at Aegis saw 45 units being collected by Rashtrothana at their ITPL facility and 53 units by ESI Blood bank at their Essar House facility.Bluocean Marketing Intelligence with 41 units to Victoria Hospital, Artech and Softtek with 47 each units to Narayana Hrudayalaya, ECI telecom with 21 units to Rashtrothana and Novo Nordisk with 130 units spread to Rashtrothana and Bowring also played a vital part in ensuring a steady supply of blood in the city in the month of May. Although each of these companies with small workforces, their unity in supporting a cause was immense as 30-40% of people working walked in to Give Life a Better Chance by donating blood. Till date most of the drives that Sankalp has organized in apartments have not yielded good results as people are busy on weekends or would have already donated blood. However, Neela Apartments and Conocorde Manhattan apartments both proved the notion wrong. Volunteers from these societies went on a door to door campaign to speak and motivate people to donate. In the resulting blood donation drives 37 and 53 units were collected by Narayana Hrudayalaya blood bank. Thalassemia Management May was a tough month when it came to provisioning fresh blood units for the children suffering from thalassemia. Inspite of the several camps organised by Rakta Kranti team the low stocks across blood banks in Bangalore put pressure on the blood banks. At Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health we had 246 patient visits with 351 blood transfusions. In several cases the staff organised for voluntary blood donors to walk into the hospital and donate. The median pre transfusion hemoblobin dropped to 8.4. The blood units transfused to the patients were collected 6 days back on an average. There were 189 visits at Samraksha with 239 transfusions. Median pre transfusion hemoglobin was 8.4 lower than what it was in the last month. The blood units transfused to the patients were collected 2 days back on an average. Samraksha also celebrated the World Thalassemia Day on 10th May with much fanfare and excitement. The children were very keen to showcase their talent so much so that the staff found it difficult to accommodate all their programs in 3 hours.Parents, donors, management, staff and children together spent a good time with fun, games, talent show and enthusiasm. The day ended with a sumptuous lunch. The step that Rashtrotthana took 2 years back to start a thalassemia day care for the little children has brought in hope and well being in the lives of more than 150 children. Celebrations apart, on the thalassemia day we would like to thank all the doctors, staff nurses, technicians, management, donors and volunteers who work tirelessly to ensure that each child suffering from thalassemia get's the best possible care and treatment. Cure from Thalassemia May was also a month when we got the reports from the HLA typing we had organised. Several of our children were found to have matched sibling donors. The clock towards their transplants and permanent cure started ticking with each of them getting started on the initial therapy for transplants. In the mean time both Yogananda and Sukrana, our children who have been transplanted are doing well while Adithya the third child was transplanted on 21st May. The option of permanent cure is closer to patients than ever before. On each Sunday we are interacting with the families who have an option of complete cure from thalassemia and making progress on this front. Disha Our help-line number has been buzzing round the clock in the last few days. The number of calls on the help line closely correlates with the blood stock availability in the city. We had a peak of 70 unique blood requests which could be taken up last month in a single day. Add to this the requests which land up with incomplete information and those which are repeat calls - we had more than 100 inbound calls. This has been a consistent pattern whole of last month. We should thank the blood bankers who choose to give the patients the help line number instead of simply saying a no when they have no stocks. The option of sending an sms to the patients is also very effective as it offers both convenience and speed.