Blood banks running under the aegis of Bihar State AIDS Control Society (BSACS) are facing huge scarcity of blood of different groups.

At some of the banks, there is not a single unit of blood available of particular groups. On Thursday, the bank at the district hospital, Jamui, did not have a single unit blood of A+, AB+, A-, B-, O- and AB- groups. It had only four units of B+ and one unit of O+ group.

At the Bhojpur district hospital blood bank, the situation was almost similar. It only had one unit of A+, B+ and O- blood groups each, while it did not have a single unit of O+, AB+, A-, B- and AB- groups.

The blood bank at the district hospital of Siwan also did not have a single unit of B+, AB+ and O- blood group on Thursday, while it had nine units of A+, three units of A-, six units of B- and one unit of AB-.

Abhay Prasad, the additional project director of Bihar State AIDS Control Society, confirmed there is crisis of some particular groups at a few banks under BSACS.

“On many occasions, you cannot find a single unit of a particular blood group in the banks. We are trying to amend this situation but the problem is that very few people in the state come up for voluntary blood donation. There is no culture of donating blood in Bihar, which is why this kind of crisis is seen at the banks,” said Prasad.

He added that BSACS is trying to create awareness among people through various means so that more and more people come up for blood donation.

“One of them is at the college-level. We have formed Red Ribbon Clubs in colleges. The National Service Scheme volunteers are the members of the Red Ribbon Clubs, who take part in the blood donation camps and try to motivate others to emulate,” he said.