Attendants of patients in need of blood at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) will not have to queue up outside the blood bank and deal with middlemen anymore.

In a bid to do away with blood agents, who often find gullible attendants and sell blood to them, the hospital administration has decided that only staff working in the blood bank will directly deliver blood to the patient’s ward on the basis of requisitions by doctors or nurses.

Earlier, an attendant of a patient in need of blood transfusion had to go to the blood bank, get the blood bag of the required group and carry it to the patient’s bed without any assistance from hospital staff. This process, doctors said, often led to overcrowding at the blood bank, which gave middlemen the opportunity to operate.

“Blood is provided free of cost to all patients in the hospital. But lacunae in the process of getting blood for patients allowed agents to sell blood to patients in need,” said the RIMS Superintendent, Dr Vivek Kashyap. “In the new process, the attendants will not have to directly deal with blood bank staff. This means that the blood bank will work only on the basis of requisitions made by doctors and nurses,” he added.

Attendants in the past have complained of shortage of blood at the RIMS blood bank. In many instances, attendants of patients had to get blood from other sources (blood banks) as blood of the required group was not available at RIMS. The shortage of blood, hospital sources said, gave agents and middlemen the opportunity to charge extra from attendants for blood, which is supposed to be provided free of cost at RIMS.

The availability of blood is crucial at RIMS as most road accident victims are brought there. Also, patients suffering from sickle cell anaemia and Thalassemia undergo treatment at RIMS and delay in blood transfusion could prove fatal for them, doctors said.

“We keep holding blood donation camps and also encourage people to donate blood. But it is difficult to predict how much blood would be required for transfusion on a given day. So we try to maintain a stock at the blood bank as far as possible,” said Dr. Kashyap, admitting that most hospitals had to deal with a shortage of blood.