BUILD BLOOD

On March 14th, I went to the District Government Hospital, Rae Bareli to donate blood as it had been a long time since I last donated blood. Although I wanted to donate in December I have forgotten it due to the hurry-burry created by Peer learning workshop & Jagriti Yatra. I was happy to donate it after a gap of exactly 7 months. The last that I donated was on 14th of August, 2012 in Chennai where my friends from MAATRAM THAEDI organised a blood donation camp in an engineering college.

To give you a prelude I have been in Rae Bareli for almost 6 months now for my project with Lok Mitra. & I have never visited any hospitals in this place. I went to the hospital & asked for the blood bank as usual. To my surprise I got the information from the old man who stood behind me in the line not from the man inside the information counter. It is either the people here are extremely helping (& informative) or the authorities are lethargic in their responses. Whatever. I got the information & walked towards the Blood Bank. The scene was similar to all the government hospitals that I have seen crowded, busy, lazy, long queues, a little litter here & there. All the same. Except for one thing... There was PAN everywhere. I won't be amazed if Uttar Pradesh is going to be called as "RED STATE" in some years from now, similar to the Pink City. Anyway as usual I navigated myself through the PAN spits & reached a very crowded place. It was like a detention centre in a police station. People of all kinds (mainly the poor) tall, short, women, men, children, Muslims, Hindus & the others like me were also there. After at least 90 minutes, I was done & returned to the office of Lok Mitra. 

The main reasons for me to write this are as follows. 

 I will try to crystalise the conditions that I have seen without adding too much of my words or my insights. I am not saying that all the things were bad BUT it was mainly disturbing.

I was happy that this is not the SAFE BLOOD!

1. Although the blood bank always constitutes of the testing centre too in other places that I have seen the storage room, bleeding room & testing centre are clearly demarcated. In Rae Bareli even though they were all separate rooms, the people were made to wait in the same place. It could have been organised better.
2. When I finally went inside the bleeding room after waiting for 20 odd minutes, I found that there was no forms to be filled. The man in-charge was with a notebook & he asked for the details. I told him that I will fill the details & then he handed me a form from inside of the locker. Given that the literacy of the people is generally low, it is the best way to maintain the records.
3. After me filling the form with some help from him (the form was monolingual & in the Rashtriyabasha) Then I was asked if I want tea or any drinks. I was amazed for two reasons... One - They didn't have any stocks of the drinks that were to be given to the donors after donating, signalling either that the donations were occasional or that the donors were not properly taken care of. I thought what if I say that I will have a bottle of Kingfisher! Anyway as usual keeping my humour suppressed, I went on to say to him that I needed Frooti.
4. The process started & I was giving the blood already. Well, there was no process at all. They didn't have a declaration in which I had to sign. They didn't have the height, weight & blood pressure test. Not even the Haemoglobin test. He opened the cover of the bag & directly inserted the needle in my vein. I was relieved that the bag was new & hopefully is not a carrier of any serious pathogens. 
5. The ball that he gave me to give pressure was a bloody hard tennis ball. I was not even able to press that. :-) Anyway that is not much of an issue as it is just the effort that matters.
6. After the bag got filled, he took the needle out & pressed my arms with a cotton. I bet I have never seen such a cotton in all my donations. I have donated in Thirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Madurai, Dindigul, Thiruchchirapalli & Chennai but never did I see such a piece of cotton used in a blood bank. The cotton looked as if it was taken out from a pillow or a mattress. It was not clean. It had many particulates.
7. When he went to give the bag to the testing centre, I drank up the Dabur Real Mango Juice & to my surprise there was only one dust bin with the symbol Bio-waste. So I was waiting for him to return. As soon as he came he threw that tetra pack in that same dustbin. To my surprise it had all the wastes including plastic tea cups, waste cotton, polythene bags & some left overs of food. The wastes could have been separated.
8. Then we spoke for sometime & when I enquired about the general availability of blood & needs of the hospital, he said that around 4000 units of blood are being used in the hospital annually. I was relieved as it was not too big. On an average just around 10 units per day.
9. He said that the people here are not open to blood donation & many think that giving blood will make them to die. He even said the story about a man who was not ready to give blood for his own daughter. I felt bad about this. He was sure to point out the reason that the awareness among the people is pathetically low & they hardly get any voluntary donations. 
10. At last I asked if I have to wait for any cards/certificates or if I can go. To my surprise (again) there was no cards or certificates given. The acknowledgement of the donation is something which is very important. I was eager to see the certificate given by the Uttar Pradesh State AIDS Control Society but that eagerness is to wait for some more years, I guess.

At last I came out thinking about the condition of the place.

I would be an idiot if I were to compare Rae Bareli with Thirichchirapalli but comparing two state capitals is not such a bad idea.

Lucknow population  - 4,588,455   - Number of blood banks found in internet - 30.

Chennai population    - 4,681,087   - Number of blood banks found in internet - 49.

 My search for blood banks in Rae Bareli ended up in vain.

http://www.asklaila.com/search/Raebareli/-/Blood%20Bank/?searchNearby=false

I was wondering about my fellow ICICI Fellows who will be working in this area in the field of Health. :-D