14th June every year is celebrated as the World Blood Donor Day. It is also the birth anniversary of Karl Landsteiner (1868), who identified the major blood groups and laid the foundation for the principals of Blood Transfusions. WHO officially established this day at the 58th World Health Assembly in 2004. The major objective of this World Day is to motivate all the countries worldwide to thank the blood donors for their precious step, and promote voluntary, safe and unpaid blood donations to ensure sufficient blood supplies. Internationally, the major objective to achieve 100% blood availability through voluntary blood donations has today became a reality in 65 nations.
Blood is the most precious thing in Life. There is no substitute. Voluntary blood donation is the bedrock on which nations are attempting to fulfill requirements of blood in their communities and at times of war, natural disasters and calamities. This remains a dream in approximately 130 countries. Science has made it possible to utilize each donation more efficiently by separating each unit into components. Potentially one donor can benefit three recipients with every unit of donation. Dr. Sujata Malik, Director Medical Administration and Strategy, Jehangir Hospital confirms the paramount need for component therapy as against whole blood - “Our blood bank has achieved 100 percent status in use of blood components in transfusions”. Going further, Dr. Malik clarified the importance of whole blood donations as it provides several components such as red blood cells, platelets, cryoprecipitate and fresh frozen plasma. Another method is to harvest a single component such as single donor platelets by use of cell separators. However this is an expensive technique reserved for specific situations such as severe decrease in platelet count as happens in dengue or leukemias.
In many of the countries that are nowhere near attaining 100% requirement through voluntary donations a significant statistic noted is the very small percentage of women donors. In at least 13 countries women donor percentage is in single digits. Even within male donors, 50% of donors are below 30 years of age.
At Jehangir Hospital Blood Bank too the percentage of women donors is around 7%. Equivalent numbers of women donors are rejected due to hemoglobin level being lower than 12.5 gm/dl which is the set cut-off level for donation. As most of the blood collected at JH is from blood donation camps conducted at various colleges, industrial & IT companies, more than 80% of our donors are below 40 years of age. Further, it has been observed that quite a lot of male youngsters also have low hemoglobin and have to be rejected. It is possible that in India, dietary habits, public health standards, status of maternal health have compounded the problems of expanding the whole blood donor base.
Dr. Malik emphasized the critical need of widening the donor base amongst both men and women, while simultaneously instituting measures to share temporary excess stocks of components with other blood banks. Sharing of resources has been encouraged by the National and State Blood Transfusion Councils by providing guidelines for transfer of blood and blood components between licensed blood banks anywhere in India. Blood transfusions are increasingly becoming safer with molecular testing for transfusion transmitted diseases known as nucleic acid testing – NAT testing, autologous blood transfusions and use of blood components.