Sankalp News

August was a month of plenty in Bangalore - at least as far as blood is concerned. Unfortunately, still several blood donation camps are not carefully planned keeping in mind the demand of blood. When the colleges reopen after the summer vacation, there are several institutions who express desire to conduct camps. Most blood banks just choose to take up the opportunity to collect rather than engage with the organizers and attempt to better schedule the dates.

Last month we cross the 1000 mark for the number of blood units being transfused to patients suffering from thalassemia across the state of Karnataka. We must congratulate Rashtrotthana Blood Bank- Bangalore, Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health-Bangalore and K L E Society Hospital and Medical Research Centre Blood bank for ensuring continued supply of safe and voluntarily donated blood for each of our patients completely free of cost.

Sankalp India Foundation, Bangalore, Think Foundation, Mumbai and We Care Trust, Mumbai collaborated with Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital,Mumbai and had started a Bone Marrow Transplantation Project at Mumbai for Thalassemia patients coming from financially poor background. The project was started in April 2016 and Karan Veer Singh from Think Foundation was the project coordinator. The first child who was transplanted was about to get discharged and the second child had got admitted. At this time we had a shocking news.

After the end of a long busy day as I sat to look at some videos, I got a call from Dr Reshma. She informed me that a child who is taking treatment at our centre needed an urgent appendicectomy – removal of his appendix which had become infected and inflamed. It was a Saturday night. The patient had travelled from a place 200km away from Bangalore and reached a prominent Government Hospital in Bangalore for the urgent surgery. However, there was no surgeon available at the hospital.