January 2015, Vol 5, Issue 1

Rakta Kranti

December was a busy month in anticipation of the winter shortage. In all 12 blood donation drives were organized in December collecting 1223 units or blood. Let’s have a look at each camp.

Despite being an institution of repute and a medical hub in the southern part of Bangalore city, their views towards voluntary blood donation are unfortunate.

It was around July last year when we decided to put laziness behind and initiate the Sunday get-together for Thalassemia. There was a situation where several parents wanted to meet us and have discussions about various issues faced by their children. We earmarked Sunday as a day for all those meetings with the parents, exploring the strategies to improve the management of the disorder as well as take small steps in direction of the cure.

When Sankalp got it's first request for platelet apheresis, little was known and understood about the procedure. We got the volunteers to donate platelets first and then gradually made progress towards educating the regular blood donors as well as building the country's first voluntary platelet database. The volunteers of the organisation spent good amount of time learning the use case and benefits of single donor platelets (SDP) in particular and apheresis technique in general.