One fact related to blood donation: A donor must give blood only once in 90 days. Again, many people don't know this. Our idea for the project before we actually started working on it was very simple: Create a city level donor database in which the data of all the blood donors will be entered in the database and the donors can be searched from the same in need of blood by both blood banks and blood donors. We had further plans of making a search filter where those who had given blood within the last 90 days would be avoided being considered eligible. Now, this, was a great idea, no doubt. But, the problem is, when we started meeting blood banks as a part of our project research, asking them what their problems are, they had more serious problems to contend with.
As a part of our project, we had met 9 blood banks in the city after gaining permission from Chennai Corporation AIDS Control and Prevention Society (CAPACS), which funds these blood banks. But our meetings with the blood banks changed our project idea on its head.
Problems faced by blood banks:
1 RELUCTANCE OF DONORS It is a sad fact that in a country as populous as India, there is a lack of availability of donors. Hence, reluctance among donors serves as the most important reason why India is suffering from an acute shortage of blood and blood packets. This reluctance stems from both fear and wrong notions about blood transfusion.
2 INABILITY TO RETAIN ONE-TIME DONORS One-time donors are those donors who have donated blood once – for the first time – during blood donation camps or along with their friends who may be regular donors. They are a great potential source of future donors: with proper guidance and motivation, they can be made aware of the great social service that they do by just allocating a few minutes of their time every 3 months. But, unfortunately, the blood banks have too many other duties to perform: to test, store and distribute blood that they do not tap into these potential future donors.
3 INABILITY TO PREDICT DEMAND The demand for blood is almost always unpredictable: a massive natural disaster could cause a sudden spurt in rise of the demand for blood. Even the daily requirement of blood is not constant; hence the individual blood banks usually have their own target of the number of voluntary blood donations they would like to receive per day. Even this target is difficult to reach for many blood banks.
4 LACK OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN BLOOD BANKS This is another sad problem concerning blood banks. Blood banks are not willing to share the details of the available blood units in their stock with each other – especially government blood banks are unwilling to share their blood stock level with private ones. Such lack of cooperation also reduces the efficiency of the functioning of these blood banks.
5 HEAVY MISMATCH BETWEEN DEMAND AND SUPPLY Due to all the above said reasons and more, there exists a great negative mismatch between supply and demand. This mismatch also causes a strain on the functioning of the blood banks, because often they have to turn down the request for blood for patients.
Now, all of these led us to the conclusion that a simple searchable database is not the solution to the problems faced by the blood banks.The bigger problem was that not enough blood is being voluntarily collected. One blood bank official mentioned to us, "You college students are the biggest source of voluntary blood donation to the blood banks. In the months of April, May and June, because the colleges are closed, we face a huge shortage in our blood needs".
We were of the conclusion that for a permanent solution to the problem of blood collection, it is imperative for people to donate more than just once. That is, it is important to cultivate the habit of regular blood donation in the minds of the blood donors. Now, habits can't just be cultivated. Our solution, was to promote the habit of voluntary blood donation among first time donors, so that they would be ready to donate blood again. And that is what we aim to achieve through www.bloodix.com
