The Free Blood Donors’ Forum launched a couple of months ago by the City Police, with the twin objective of helping accident victims and cancer patients on the one hand and tackling the growing menace of a blood mafia on the other, has found itself besieged with calls for help.
The forum has a blood donors’ data bank that is growing by the day, with phone numbers, blood groups and necessary details of all willing donors in the seven police stations under the Shangumugham sub-division being added along with those from other areas in the city who are coming forward voluntarily.
So far, the forum has helped 22 needy persons, ranging from a one-and-a-half-year-old infant, who required the rare A-negative blood group, to 70-plus year-old cancer patients, apart from a handful of accident victims and women who had to go in for urgent Caesarean surgeries.
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According to Jawahar Janardh, Assistant Commissioner, Shangumugham, whose brainchild the forum is, the donors have been from varied backgrounds.
There was a patient who required 20 units of a rare blood group for a bone-marrow transplant.
The forum pooled in its resources to manage eight units, while the patient’s relatives managed the rest from among themselves and the hospital’s blood bank.
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The forum, launched as a joint venture of the Indian Medical Association’s Thiruvananthapuram chapter and the Janamaitri Suraksha project, is now busy distributing and collecting more donation consent forms amongst students and the general public. The data bank has 1,125 donors so far, ready on call round the clock.
Those who want to donate blood, or require blood urgently, may contact the forum on 0471 2501801 or 9497980021.
Dennis Marcus Mathew
Forum has so far helped 22 needy persons
Donors came from varied backgrounds