City govt hospitals run out of blood

Shiva Reddy struggled to arrange six units of platelets and red blood cells for his son who is admitted at the State-run Victoria Hospital here on Tuesday.

Reddy was caught in a dilemma, leave his ailing son alone or go arrange for blood. Similar was the plight of a woman who had no clue on how to arrange blood for her only son who has been admitted in the burns ward of Vitoria Hospital.

Such is the condition of most government hospitals in the City which suffer from chronic shortage of blood samples. An acute shortage of blood and non-availability of blood of certain groups has been noticed in most of these hospitals.

Though some government doctors attributed the shortage to lack of donors during the festive season, sources said it was lack of planning that led to the situation. Holding blood donation camps and alerting donors when the stock is low is all that is needed, they said.

According to the data available on the Drug Control Department’s website, Sanjay Gandhi Institute of Accident Care, a hospital that sees a good number of accident cases, had only one unit of O+ve red blood cells. Victoria Hospital had just one unit each of A+ve and B-ve samples, besides 45 units of O+ve blood sample. Private blood banks, however, have sufficient stock. They admitted that at least 50 per cent of requests for blood units came from government hospitals.

H M Ashok, technical supervisor, blood bank, Red Cross Society, said they ensured that camps were conducted frequently to meet the demand.  When contacted, Director of Department of Health and Family Welfare, Dr G Vamadev, said that he was unaware of the situation.