A crisis of blood is being felt across hospitals and blood banks as the number of blood donation camps has dwindled severely because of the third wave of the Covid pandemic.
The surge of infections has prompted the organisers of blood donation camps to cancel their programmes during a season that is the best time to collect stock.
In many cases, potential donors have tested positive for Covid and would not be eligible to donate blood for 28 days post-recovery. Besides, those who have taken a vaccine dose recently cannot donate blood for 14 weeks. All these factors have further reduced the number of donors.
Several blood banks and hospitals spoke about the crisis.
At Life Care Blood Bank, the monthly collection used to be about 5,000 units of blood. In January, it fell to 3,000 units. Peerless Hospital had 260 units of blood in its stock on Saturday. In November, before the third wave, the hospital had 350 units in its stock on any day. In pre-Covid times, the stock rarely fell below 450 units.
At MR Bangur Hospital, the crisis prompted nurses and other healthcare workers to donate blood to replenish some of the stock at the hospital’s blood bank.
MR Bangur is a dedicated 713 bed Covid hospital.
“There are many Covid patients with comorbidities like chronic kidney disease, cancer and anaemia. They require blood during their stay in hospital. If any woman who underwent Caesarian section is admitted with Covid, we must be prepared to give her blood if she requires it. Covid treatment doesn’t require blood infusion but other ailments may lead to blood requirement for a patient,” said Sisir Naskar, the hospital’s medical superintendent.
He said that the lack of blood could worsen the health condition of patients with comorbidities.
Patients who test positive for Covid just after a surgery also require blood. The crisis has hit people with thalassaemia and haemophilia, who routinely need blood transfusion.
“We had been experiencing the shortage of blood for the last two or three weeks. So, our nursing staff and other healthcare workers decided to organise a donation camp on their own and increase the stock in our blood bank,” said Naskar.
The crisis emerged because many blood donation camps were cancelled since the start of January because of the sharp rise in the number of Covid cases and people started avoiding assembly.
D. Ashis, an organiser of several donation camps in the city, said that many camps scheduled for Sundays in January had to be cancelled.
“A camp that was scheduled for this Sunday at Paikpara has been cancelled. There has to be some awareness campaigns urging people to come and donate blood without crowding the camps,” he said.
The fall in the number of donation camps has squeezed the source of blood for blood banks.