Blood Donation in the time of COVID

Blood Donation in the times of Covid Sunday, July 19, 2020 12:32 PM As part of the JanaSahayog initiative of Mitra Foundation, we have been conducting 2 blood donation camps in the LBS Nagar area, over the past 8 years. In all we had conducted 16 camps, with a total collection crossing 1000 units. We had our last camp on 22nd Sept 2019, and were scheduled to the have the next one on 23rd Mar 2020. While we had initiated the preparation and communications for this camp, we ran into a the Covid 19 challenges, and the start of lockdown forcing us to cancel it, while we had time to understand how the situation pans out and see what would be the appropriate approach. In the current  Covid situation, there is a reduction in the need for Blood, as there were fewer surgeries etc being taken up, but the need for blood for some of the other needs like those suffering from various anemic diseases, sickle cell disease or various forms of blood cancer is as in normal times. After the initial periods of lockdown, the shortage of blood at the hospitals and blood banks as become more prominent. We have been in touch with a couple of blood banks to monitor the situation. With the intent of sustaining our normal cadence of enabling our community to donate blood on a regular basis, we have started to look for ways that will factor in the necessary precautions to enable a safe donation from the volunteers minimizing their exposure to risks. The government has already recognized this and came out with an Advisory for Voluntary Blood Donation during COVID - MoHFW. The BMST-TTK blood bank has recently adapted one of their ambulances as a mobile blood donation van, and Standard Operation Procedures, to setup up mini-camps. After satisfying ourselves that we would be comfortable getting our community volunteers to donate in this setup, we set out to plan our first Mitra Foundation mini-camp.