For families who are undergoing the process of finding blood for the first time, it is particularly dreadful and scary. The number of bags that are donated, have to equal the number of bags the patient needs. In emergencies, there is not a lot of time for patient’s relatives to actually collect the blood. The system clearly has flaws that need to be addressed.
In the past two years, a quiet revolution of sorts has been taking place in Karachi at the Indus Blood Center, a state-of-the-art facility set up by Dr Saba Jamal and her team, who felt there was a need that needed to be addressed.
“We realised that patients have some unique problems, and one of the problems was the availability of blood after an incident, so we are trying to fix that with a centralised blood bank which would be accessible to all the patients.”
The quick availability of blood in an emergency can make the difference between life and death.
The Indus Blood Bank was set up at the Indus Hospital with a simple mission: “to mobilise Pakistan to 100 per cent voluntary blood donation,” says Dr Jamal, who is particularly excited by what her team has been able to accomplish in such a short span of time.
“Centralised blood banking system is based on a volunteer basis,” she says. “We look at institutions such as schools, colleges, madrassas, corporate sectors, factories and even apartment blocks and residential areas.”