As Sankalp embarked upon the journey of building a statewide helpline for blood, the promise was made to visit every district of the state and network the good blood banks to the helpline. When the helpline was formally launched last year, sufficient work had been done to cover more than 80% of the area form where blood requests are generated. The idea was to do the remaining before Sankalp turned 7 on 23 May 2010
With this expansion phase the intention was to reach 100%. Detailed discussions with a senior transfusion specialist in Karnataka, helped us identify the blood banks all over the state which are good and eligible to be a part of the statewide helpline. Each and every blood bank in the list was scrtunised and finally an action plan was drawn
Bijapur, Raichur, Belgaum, Bagalkot, Haveri, Chikmagalur, Hassan, Kodagu, ChitraDurga, Tumkur, Mandya were all visited either to connect the remaining blood banks or to add new ones based on suggestions recieved. Phone calls were made and appointments were taken. Detailed discussions with blood bank officers in these districts helped us identify the scenario of blood availability and blood donation in these districts. With the completion of visits to these places, Sankalp is today left with a very small number of blood banks to connect to with whom discussions are still on. Bidar and Uttar Kannada are the only 2 districts where physically our volunteers have not yet travelled
Our journey is on, the initial ground work is over. A Sankalp statewide helpline for blood which was a dream at this stage last year looks so much real and so much special at this stage!