To support the blood requirements of patients with rare blood groups, Rotary Bangalore TTK Blood Centre’s Bangalore Medical Services Trust (BMST), in association with the Karnataka State Blood Transfusion Council, on Tuesday launched a ‘Rare Blood Donor’ programme.
Under the programme, BMST is forming a ‘Rare Blood Donor’ registry, a database of voluntary donors of rare blood groups and a repository of frozen red cell units of rare blood types. Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao launched the programme on the occasion of the National Voluntary Blood Donation Day that is observed on October 1.
This programme has technical expertise and support from the National Institute of Immunohematology (NIIH) ICMR Mumbai, New York Blood Center, U.S., and the International Society of Blood Transfusion, (ISBT, Amsterdam). “The programme includes training and awareness for blood centres across Karnataka about rare blood groups. We will perform extended blood group testing by both serology and molecular techniques to identify rare blood types among patients and their family members,” Latha Jagannathan, medical director and managing trustee Rotary Bangalore TTK Blood Centre, BMST, told The Hindu after the launch.
Pointing out that testing of 500 individuals has been done and 60 donors have been enrolled under the registry so far, Dr. Latha said, “We will also identify rare group individuals from amongst our voluntary donors and share the anonymised data (without name, phone and other identifying data) of the potential donors with the International Rare Donor Panel. Apart from Mumbai’s ICMR centre, ours is the only such centre that has started this rare blood donor registry.”
Rare blood donors
Ankit Mathur, BMST additional medical director, said as of now 45 blood group systems have been identified. “Of these ABO and Rh (Rhesus factor) belong to the major blood group system. For transfusion, blood units of the same ABO and RhD (Rhesus factor D) are cross-matched with the patient’s blood sample and compatible blood is transfused. This is adequate for routine blood transfusions,” he said.
“Amongst the other blood group systems, some are called rare blood groups as their incidence is less than one in 1,000 to one in 10,000 people or more. Some examples of rare blood groups are Bombay (Oh) phenotype, Rh-D-/-D- (called Rh D dash dash), In (a+b-), Co(a-b-), CdE/CdE, Mg, weaker variants of A, B, O and Rh antigens, among other. These can be clinically significant and play an adverse role in certain conditions,” Dr. Mathur explained.
Dr. Janannathan said patients with thalassemia, cancer and other such conditions with rare blood groups who receive multiple transfusions, would need more precisely matched blood for transfusion.
“Because they are so rare, it is very difficult to find a blood donor with the same rare blood group. Women with rare blood types have problems during pregnancy, including miscarriages and babies born with jaundice due to haemolytic disease of the new-born (HDN). HDN is a condition with a high mortality rate if not medically managed properly,” she explained, adding that the rare blood donor programme would help meet the requirement of such patients.
Rotary Bangalore TTK Blood Centre, BMST, is the only NGO, standalone centre in India which has a blood centre, tissue bank, HLA Lab and stem cell collection and therefore provides a wide spectrum of services in the field of blood, organ and cellular therapies.
“Ours is the largest regional blood transfusion centre in Karnataka. We collect around 40,000 units of blood per annum, about 35% of which is issued free. The entire collection is from voluntary blood donors. We have a database of 6,00,000 voluntary donors,” Dr. Mathur said.
Published - October 01, 2024 11:08 pm IST
