Single donor can now give 10 units of platelets!

A single donor couch is being procured by Rotary at a cost of Rs.28 lakh

A single donor can now give 10 units of platelets or plasma at a time instead of the whole blood in a single sitting.

This will become a reality with Rotary Blood Bank getting an Apheresis – a single donor couch – wherein the donor can give the blood in a comfortable environment watching movie of his/her choice.

“Specific cells or plasma can now be obtained. This will enable us to collect 10 units of platelets for a patient suffering from dengue or a life-threatening disease in single stroke instead of whole blood,” Rotary Blood Bank Chairman Ch. Kishore Kumar told

The Hindu on Tuesday.

A single donor couch is being procured at a cost of Rs.28 lakh. The club will celebrate its decennial on February 10 for which it is also procuring the region’s first mobile donation vehicle at a cost of Rs.27 lakh. Both facilities will be dedicated to the people during the decennial celebrations.

The fully-air-conditioned bus will be equipped with storage, three beds and enough space for staff and donors. This will also have a generator. A bus has been bought and the fabrication work is now going on.

Mr. Kishore said the bus would be used for conducting donation camps at various places in the city as well as rural areas. Awareness campaign would also be organised by distributing leaflets at various junctions.

Rotary Blood Bank was started with the facility to collect whole blood. It became a 24x7 bank a year after its establishment. Component segregation centre was introduced in 2009. On an average it gives and receives 2,000 units a month.

Mr. Kishore, a frequent blood donor himself and a former Rotary governor, said the awareness level was low on voluntary donation. “There is shortage of negative groups mainly AB negative,” he said and appealed to healthy people to donate blood regularly to help the needy.