July 31: Time has changed, and with it the technology. But, what has not changed with the time is the awareness level of the public about the new technologies.

Even as medical science is achieving new milestones by inventing new methods of treatment for various ailments, it is unfortunate that the public as well as a section of medical professionals remains in the dark about these developments.

The state-of-the-art Model Blood Bank at the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), the city’s premiere health institute, has all the required infrastructure and facilities for the separating, processing and transfusion of various blood components. But transfusion of blood components has yet to become popular here and we are still sticking to the old practice of transfusing “whole blood”.

Transfusion of blood components is recognised as the best process, which could cut down on the wastage of blood and has become like a norm in many places across the country, which is struggling to meet the requirement of blood.

The city has five government-run blood banks and nine in the private sector, five of which are attached to various hospitals. The daily requirement of blood in the city is between 300 and 400 units (300 ml each).

The GMCH’s “failure” has brought in the voluntary sector to the scene. Assam-Gujarat Voluntary Blood Donation Association, a non-government organisation, is all set to set up a state-of-the-art blood component extraction and transfusion cell here, besides launching an awareness drive across the city.

“The GMCH has all the facilities, but it has not yet been able to create awareness. Moreover, the general lack of interest among government doctors in prescribing transfusion of the required blood component instead of whole blood has led to the stagnation of the GMCH blood bank,” said Sobhan Vyas of the NGO.

Vyas said the voluntary organisation was ready to work with the government hospitals having blood banks to popularise use of blood components.

Habibul Islam, the medical director of the GMCH’s blood bank, admitted that there was a lack of awareness among people as well as those associated with clinical laboratories and said the hospital, too, has decided to launch an awareness campaign.

He said the slogan of the campaign would be “Stop wasting blood by processing it into components”, adding that similar training programmes would also be organised for the paramedics.

Islam said the practice of transfusing whole blood was slowly becoming obsolete. “Many of us are actually wasting valuable blood by not processing the blood unit into components and transfusing only the required part to the patients,” he said.

“The GMCH blood bank is one of the 10 state-of-the-art blood banks in the country according to the National AIDS Control Organisation. The bank has all facilities and infrastructure, including a refrigerated centrifuge, for blood component separation. Everyday the bank processes five to six units of blood into different components. The number has to be increased immediately,” he said.

The GMCH has also acquired a cell separator machine to separate the blood components, particularly the platelets, from whole blood.

The plateletpheresis procedure benefits hemato-oncology patients and cancer patients on chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

Islam said the awareness campaign would sensitise and make the public understand the benefits of blood donation and component transfusion. “A donor should be sensitised that one unit of blood donated by him/her can save six lives instead of one if it is processed into different components,” he said.

According to Islam, the GMCH is currently processing whole blood into packed red cells, platelet concentrates, frozen plasma and cryoprecipitate components on a regular basis. Many leading private hospitals are taking blood components from GMCH.

That blood component processing and transfusion is an alien method for even the regular donors is evident from the reaction of Ajai Bhagwati of Uzan Bazar. “I have been donating blood since the age of 20. I was totally in the dark about the fact that a unit of blood can be split into different components and used to save lives,” he said.