A Bangladeshi patient, who had come to Calcutta for cancer treatment and needed transfusion, found blood in an unexpected quarter — the local police station. That too without a single visit.
The inspector-in-charge of Technocity police station in New Town came over to the hospital and donated a unit.
A young woman had come from Bangladesh seeking treatment for her mother. Her haemoglobin level had fallen precariously low and she needed blood transfusion. Since Tata Medical Center has a blood bank, the hospital provided emergency supply but it also replenishes its stock with live donors. “Since cancer patients are low in immunity, we need to access blood well in advance for us to run the collected blood through a series of tests before it can be used for transfusion,” said a source at the hospital.
While it is customary for the patient’s kin to bring a donor, the young woman had no one to turn to. In such cases, members from the hospital’s security or housekeeping team step up. But at that juncture, those who were on duty were still not eligible since their last donation. Men cannot give blood again within three months of donating a unit.
On coming to know of the woman’s predicament, the hospital’s security in charge Gautam Jana reached out to the local police station. Next morning, it was the inspector-in-charge Somnath Bhattacharyya himself who turned up at the hospital.
“It is all in a day’s work for us,” the inspector smiled when contacted. “I have donated blood in camps organised by us in my previous postings. But this was the first time that I did so for a specific patient in a hospital.”
According to hospital sources, the police have held blood donation camps at the hospital but this is only the second occasion in recent years when the borobabu of a police station himself came to donate blood. Anindya De, the earlier IC, had also once helped out this way, sources at the hospital recalled.