Over the 9 years of Sankalp Rakta Kranti, the policy of selecting a blood bank for a drive has been the willingness of the institution to adhere to working standards as mandated by NACO and Drug Controller Gazette, transparency in making units available to any patient on need and most importantly give donors a conducive environment to spur them on to become regular voluntary blood donor for life.
When one or more of these aspects are compromised repeatedly by any blood bank, we discontinue to work with them. This period of discontinuation lasts till corrective actions are taken and the promise of compliance is made once again. Several institutions have taken this in a positive spirit and improved their services so that Sankalp and the blood bank together give every donor a truly memorable experience.
However, there is another part of this story as well. There are some cases where the people within a few institutions just do not care. In the last 12 months we have had to take a tough stand against a few premier institutions in Bangalore by stopping to work together with them for camps. Of these, there are at least 6 of them that display a strong resistance to change, the reasons being far too many. All of these 6 are nodal parts of care for pediatrics, trauma, maternity, cardiology, cancer ailments. Patients from all across the state take treatment in one or more of these centers.
What comes as a rude shock to us is not just the unresponsive behavior towards blood donation but also the lack of responsibility towards patients. We believed that the sense of responsibility towards patients would make them rethink and take corrective measures. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case and the patients continue to suffer. Efforts taken to sensitize these 6 institutions have been futile.
Is it fair to burden the patient with the additional task of finding safe blood? Or do we accept low quality and continue camps at the cost of donors safety?
Well, these institutes seem to care for neither of the two. Our question to them is “whose responsibility is it?”