Thalassemia pilot project looks at dedicated centres

The buddy system between blood banks and thalassemia centres seems to be struggling.

- Malathy Iyer

Mumbai: “Blood banks are regularly inspected by the state Food and Drug Administration and Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation officials. How come they never noticed that private blood banks are hardly giving any blood to thalassemia despite so much shortage of blood in Mumbai,” asked Chetan Kothari who got the RTI information after filing appeals.

He found the thalassemia centre at the state-run JJ Hospital was supposed to get 10 bags each from three private hospitals every month. Over six months, they gave 17 instead of 60 units to JJ. The centre at BMC-run Sion Hospital has five buddy blood banks (now mandated to be called blood centres instead) attached to private hospitals. Two banks provided 88% and 75% of the requisite numbers, while others were woefully short. The BMC-run CTC centre in Borivli is mandated to get 155 units per month from six blood banks, but between January and June got only 210 units, said Kothari.