A fact about Blood Donation!

I came across a situation last week where i had to get a AB+ve group blood, for my father, who was undergoing a surgery. The hospital blood bank did not have it and hence they refferred me to another blood bank, where that group blood was available.So, i went out and got 2 'pints'/'bags' of AB+ve blood. For the replacement of this, i got hold of two donors, each of them gave a pint of blood. The first of the surprises (one more will follow later!) came when the Blood Bank person gave me a receipt of INR 1200/- and asked me to give the amount! When asked, they said 'blood is free (donated), but the handling and testing charges (service charges) are separate' and hence the amount. When asked about the replacement blood given by my two donors, he said 'we have deducted INR 100/- per pint and hence the bill reflects INR 600/- per pint otherwise it would be INR 700/- per pint of blood'!! This simply put me in a state of surprise and shock !! I had and have the money, so i can afford, but what about the rest of the people...there will be lot of poor people, for whom blood might be required at one stage or the other of their life...then what will they do...they cant definitely shell out this BIG amount for the blood!! see, blood also asks for money !! too pathetic!

Now i got the blood and gave it to the hospital blood bank people. They said they will use it when the doctor tells them. fine, i thought! The surgery was done and my dad came back to the ward but what i came to know was the docs did not use the blood itself!! When i went and asked the blood bank staff about this, they said they had taken this as a precautionary measure, as a 'stand-by'! But they said, whenever doc needs it, we will provide it. As my dad was scheduled to stay in the hospital for two more days, i thought maybe they will use it in the coming days. But the greatest shock/surprise came when they did not use the blood at all! When i spoke to the Blood bank chief doc about this, i came to know that once a blood is got for one particular patient, if the patient does not require that blood, then no one else will be given that!! eventually, it will be discarded!! what a waste of money ...what a waste of someone's very useful blood !!

Digging deep into this (after recovering from a shock/surprise!), i asked the doc whether there is any rules related to this or is this scientific? He told me that these are rules from Govt of India; more than rules, there is a scientific message in this. Every persons' blood has some patterns for which the blood bank people have to match and then only they can issue the blood. Now, once the blood is issued, if its not used by the patient, then it is prone for discardation because if any other patient needs the blood, then that patients blood pattern has to be tested and matched with this blood pint. But the problem is the blood pint, which is sealed in a clean medical environment cannot be opened again as there can be chances of contamination!!So, finally, the blood pints will be stored in deep-freeze refridgerators and after 30days, it will be discarded!! blood(n)money going 2 drains...I somehow personally feel that this can be avoided by printing the blood pattern(s) on the container label so that this can be reused instead of wasting hard-earned money and hard-earned blood!

This is just my feeling...hope to see this being realized in the future...