NEED TO ASSURE SAFE BLOOD FOR ALL
The theme of WHO’s blood donor day 2019’s campaign is blood donation and universal access to safe blood transfusion, as a component of achieving universal health coverage. they have developed the slogan “Safe blood for all” to raise awareness of the universal need for safe blood in the delivery of health care and the crucial roles that voluntary donations play in achieving the goal of universal health coverage. The theme strongly encourages more people all over the world to become blood donors and donate blood regularly – actions which are key to building a strong foundation of sustainable national blood supplies that are sufficient to meeting the needs of all patients requiring transfusion.
The day and the theme is also a call to action to all governments, national health authorities and national blood services to provide adequate resources and put in place systems and infrastructures to increase collection of blood from voluntary, regular unpaid blood donors; to provide quality donor care; to promote and implement appropriate clinical use of blood, and to set up systems for the oversight and surveillance on the whole chain of blood transfusion.
The MAIN objectives of that campaign are
- To celebrate and thank individuals who donate blood and to encourage those who have not yet donated blood to start donating;
- To highlight the need for committed, year-round blood donation, to maintain adequate supplies and achieve universal and timely access to safe blood transfusion;
- To focus attention on donor health and the quality of donor care as critical factors in building donor commitment and a willingness to donate regularly;
- To demonstrate the need for universal access to safe blood transfusion and provide advocacy on its role in the provision of effective health care and in achieving the goal of universal health coverage;
- To mobilize support at national, regional and global levels among governments and development partners to invest in, strengthen and sustain national blood programmes.
HOW BAGMO ASSURE SAFE BLOOD?
Blood traceability and effective blood bank management will reduce smooth running of blood banks and blood storage centers. Temperature monitoring of individual blood bags are another important parameter which have an impact on quality of stored blood. Blood storage centres BSC are the answer to make blood available to most of the locations in India. BSC collects blood from a mother blood bank and then stores it in their premises and issues it to patients. We propose that by establishing the reliability of blood products will increase confidence in increasing inventory of blood products in blood storage centers and hence smooth functioning of BSCs and this in turn will directly save many lives.
At present, the temperature of blood products is not recorded during logistics, thus making the current practice unreliable. In BSCs, it is important to maintain an up-to-date inventory of all types of blood units. The unused units should be returned before expiry date to the mother blood bank where the usage rate is high and wastage is very less. With the existing implementation of the system, there is no way to guarantee that the returning blood units have been preserved under the right storage conditions. This issue of incredibility prevents most of the blood banks from accepting the returned blood products. As a result, a lot of blood products are wasted, all because of the absence of any valid record of storage temperature and maintained cold chain.
