Case Studies
How Indian Red Cross, Barshi prevented 850 ineligible donors from donating and in turn ensuring safe components and savings of INR 1.0 million
Recently on the occasion of World Blood Donor day, thousands of people donated their blood all over the country. Nearly more than 90% of these donations were carried out in camps set up by various organizations in different areas.
Donations at camp site pose challenges in effective donor screening and identification cause of the volume of donations and limitation of Infrastructure mainly connectivity.
Very often we see reactive donors or ineligible donors redonate at different blood drives. All the donated blood goes through the testing phase and safe blood is separated. But sometimes unsafe blood also can penetrate this test and reach the patients infecting them. Though this problem may go unnoticed but the consequences are fatal. Also the ineligible donors (who are temporarily deferred due to the less time lag between their earlier donations or because cold flue or other illness symptoms) lead to low quality and reactive blood components.
Indian Red cross Society SRS Blood bank (SRSBB), Barshi, is one of the oldest blood bank in the region with highest quality standards. Dr.V.J. Nimkar, Chairman SRSBB, Dr. R.V. Jagtap, BTO, Mr.Ajit Kunkulol, Vice Chairman and Mr.Subhash Javlekar, Secretary had been constantly working on ways to reduce reactive blood components.
Mr.Javlekar, "NACO reported that 2234 patients got infected with HIV cause of Bad blood transfusion in last 12 months. Inspite of the latest testing methodologies leading to lesser window period of these fatal diseases, the problems are still increasing. We wanted to address this concern and eliminate it".
There are 2 approaches on identifying safe donor. Pre-Donation identification and Post donation screening. Pre-Donation donor identification is one of the simplest yet most important task which helps eliminate ineligibile donors i.e., reactive donors as well as time based ineligible donors.
SRSBB decided on a thorough Donor identification at camp site using "Safetrans". This solution offers offline donor identification software system which blood bank can synchronize with “Safetrans” blood bank traceability software before going to the camps.
"By doing this we have the latest eligible and ineligible donor database in encrypted format on the camp site donor identification module" Dr. Jagtap.
At the camp site, blood bank can use this module offline, without any internet connectivity to identify existing donors and check if they are eligible or ineligible based on their past testing records and donation timelines.
The results of this approach have been really great. Just to share with you the details of one large onsite camp at Barshi conducted by Indian Red Cross Society-Shriman Rambhai Shah blood bank, Barshi (Solapur). Total registered donors – 458 , Total ineligible donors identified – 38 this includes 17 reactive donors and 19 time based ineligible donors.
Since last 3 years, SRSBB had identified 850 + ineligible donors and prevented them from donation
This helped SRSBB from multiple aspects.
1) Ensure safe and high quality components to Patients.
2) Eliminated threat / Exposure of our team to reactive blood.
3) Improved quality of components.
4) INR 1.0 million Component preparation Cost saved by eliminating reactive donors.
"One of the key thing which helped us achieve this is the minimum hardware requirement, no internet connectivity and ease of use of "Safetrans"software" Mr.Prashant Budukh, Coordinator, SRSBB.
"It has been a great practice for us and we feel this will really prove as an asset for blood transfusion in our country by saving lives of people in large numbers. Pre Donor identification should be made mandatory at camp sites" Mr.Ajit Kunkulol.