Warm climate, coupled with a host of examinations and the Lok Sabha election, has led to a decrease in blood donation in Dakshina Kannada. This, in turn, has caused a shortfall of blood at the blood banks in the district for last few days.
Bhavani Shankar, the officer of KMC Blood Bank in Mangaluru, said the shortfall has been in the last two months. “Usually in April and May there will be a shortfall due to summer. But this time due to extreme warm conditions, the number of blood donation camps in the period has drastically come down. Organisers fear adverse effects to donors due to warm weather,” Dr. Shankar said.
With elections in the region, prospective donors and several members of social organisations are involved in campaign work, and thus it has affected blood donation. Hosting examinations for undergraduate and graduate courses also impacted blood donation.
Senior Specialist of Government Wenlock Hospital Regional Blood Transfusion Centre, Sharath Kumar, said a shortfall has been seen at the centre since the last week of April. “In the earlier months, we were collecting on an average of 1000 units of blood. The collection has come down to around 50%,” Dr. Kumar said.
As per the data posted on Jeeva Sanjeevini portal of the Drug Control Department, the stock of each of the negative A, B, AB and O blood groups is almost in single digits in the 11 government and private blood banks in Dakshina Kannada as on April 4.
In case of positive blood groups, good number of units of A, B, and O groups and few units of AB group were available in the 11 blood banks as on April 4.
Dr. Kumar said a letter has been written by Mangalore University to affiliated colleges asking the latter to hold blood donation camps through NSS and other groups. Social organisations are also being asked to hold the blood donation camps. Dr. Shankar said voluntary blood donors were being called to mobalise more persons for donation of blood.
