Blood units to go waste in Burla medical college

Sambalpur: Over one hundred bottles of collected blood units at Red Cross blood bank in Veer Surendra Sai Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (VIMSAR) will go to waste on Thursday. Reason, all the units are nearing the date of expiry.

Labels on the blood units accessed by OTV showed the units were collected on 11th October while their date of expiry falls on 12th November.

Surprisingly, some labels have no information on either the date of collection or the date of expiry.

This is not all. Some applications, copy of which accessed by OTV, written to the Blood Bank authorities have revealed startling facts.

In the letter, VIMSAR doctors have rejected some blood units as these have shown signs of clotting showing unfit for use. This has raised question on the preservation of blood units in the Blood Bank.

When asked about such an alarming condition of the blood units, the officials said the case has arisen due to excess collection of units in the recent past.

“These (blood units) are not getting waste. In fact we have recorded a huge collection of blood units in the past few weeks,” Blood Bank official Ashok Nayak said.

On the other hand, feigning ignorance about the huge number of reserved blood units, Red Cross Blood Bank in-charge, VIMSAR, Susant Kar said, “In the last donation camp we had received some 1200 units of which 70-80 units of blood went waste. Instead of dumping, we had kept those discarded units in the Bank.”

Despite repeated attempts, VIMSAR superintendent could not be contacted for comments.