Do you think that India must create a policy framework to address various aspects of blood availability and safety through a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder collaboration? Comment (200 Words)
Refer - Financial Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands
IAS Parliament 4 years
KEY POINTS
· In India, it’s possible that a trauma patient loses his life if the blood bank in the hospital he lands up in doesn’t have his blood type.
· Blood transfusion in our country relies on a fragmented blood-supply system, where control is exercised by different levels of the government, but at the point of delivery, the patient and his family have to run around arranging for blood themselves.
· In reality, shortfall of blood results more from inefficiencies in the existing blood banks in India and limited voluntary non-remunerated blood donation.
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The non-existent connectivity and interdependence between blood banks in India causes inconsistency in demand and supply among blood banks, besides leading to increase in wastage of blood and limited use of infrastructural resources.
· A planned partial centralisation of blood services through a hub-and-spoke model of regional blood transfusion centres (RBTCs). These hubs are proposed to be fully equipped to cater to multiple satellite blood banks or storage centres in the regions that perform limited functions.
· These banks will be high-volume blood-collection centres equipped with state-of-the-art technology in transfusion medicine for component separation, blood processing and quality systems.
· This can help curb wastage of extra blood collected at blood banks, especially now that bulk transfers between blood banks have been allowed by the National Blood Transfusion Council (NBTC) and are also permissible under the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules.
