In a major modification to the National Blood Policy, blood banks will now be able to borrow units from one another in case of a shortage.
The Union Health Ministry took the decision on Friday as part of reforms to the handling of blood units in the country. “The file has been cleared by the Minister. The formal instructions will be issued soon. This should, to some extent, sort out the issue of shortage. Earlier, donated blood could not be transferred from one bank to another,” said N.S. Kang, Additional Secretary and Director-General of the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).
In India, NACO implements the National Blood Safety Programme.
A shortage of blood units has been a recurring problem since the Supreme Court, on January 1, 1998, banned paid donation.
“The government has been encouraging voluntary donation ever since. Despite getting most of our requirements from donors, the inability of the banks to lend each other surplus units was a major hurdle. It has taken a while to sort this out, and we are hoping this will help us phase out replacement donation eventually,” said a senior official of the NACO.
According to the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), India has 2,760 licensed blood banks. A 2012 World Health Organisation (WHO) report said nine million of 12 million blood units needed annually in India were collected through voluntary donation.
When the Supreme Court banned paid donation, the government was mandated, under the National Blood Policy (2002), to phase out replacement donation in five years. However, since few people donate blood regularly, hospitals ask family members of patients to donate blood so as to pre-emptively replace the blood withdrawn from the blood bank.
The National and State Blood Transfusion Councils were established in the 1990s to promote voluntary donations. There are three kinds of blood banks — government, private and those run by NGOs.
Other than the non-governmental blood banks, the rest are linked to hospitals. “On paper, you can donate at any bank, though only the NGOs or government-run banks are allowed to conducted donation camps. Ideally, hospitals should not ask for replacement donation at all. We are hoping to increase entitlement literacy… over the next few months,” the official said.
