When it was first started in the city, Jeevan Blood Bank’s aim was to provide the residents with the safest blood possible from volunteer donors. After 21 years and providing over 3.7 lakh units of blood components, the not-for-profit organisation has had to shut shop. It is simply impossible, the founders say to maintain the highest levels of quality and still recover costs. However, the organisation’s public cord blood bank as well as its bone marrow donor registry will continue to operate.
It started with an idea that Saranya Narayan, co-founder and medical director of Jeevan, had in 1992. Her idea materialised in September 1995. When they first set up, says chairman P. Srinivasan, everyone from carpenters to A/C mechanics worked for free to help set up the blood bank. “They all wanted to contribute in some way.”
From the beginning, the blood bank decided it would convert every blood unit into components and that all donations would be by volunteers. Safety was their motto, and the bank has had many firsts to its credit, the founders say — in 1999 it became the first blood bank in the State to be ISO 9000 certified, in 2001 it pushed for, and got a government order to become a blood storage centre that would test and provide blood to hospitals, in 2006, it launched a ‘Make Blood Free’ programme to provide blood free to those who could not afford it.
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Testing and safety
Testing and safety was something the bank consistently worked on, says Dr. Saranya. In 2002, they started screening blood donations for leptospirosis and found that people could be carriers of the disease and that it could be transmitted through blood donations. “We also used a core antibody test to screen for ‘occult’ Hepatitis B — which donors could have had several years ago, but which could still be transmitted,” she said.
But by 2012, there were signs that the standards they wanted to maintain were not sustainable with rising cost. “We spend ₹2,300 on every unit of blood donated. For the past three years, we have had a loss of ₹2 lakh per month,” says Dr. Srinivasan. There are a number of reasons for this he says: Doing more safety tests than those required by the government led to higher cost and with the government fixing MRPs for blood components, recovering cost was problematic. “Organising camps also became a challenge as we were seen as a private blood bank. Also, over the last few years a number of blood banks have come up that are offering blood at lower prices,” he says.
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And so, the last blood donation was collected on January 31, and operations will continue till the last unit issued. But the founders say that now, all their efforts will be put into scaling up the public cord blood bank and the bone marrow registry. “Our goal is to have 30,000 donated cord blood units and 1,00,000 bone marrow donors registered by 2022. This will enable 70 per cent of Indians with blood cancers to find a match and hope for a cure,” says Dr. Srinivasan.
“This is truly a ‘Make in India’ project,” says Dr. Saranya.
Dr. Srinivasan adds that the hope now, is that this dream comes through.