Open AccessCovid‐19 pandemic‐ response to challenges by blood transfusion services in India: a review report
Author(s) -
Dhiman Yashaswi,
Patidar Gopal K.,
Arora Satyam
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
isbt science series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1751-2824
pISSN - 1751-2816
DOI - 10.1111/voxs.12563
Subject(s) - pandemic , medicine , blood transfusion , transfusion medicine , economic shortage , covid-19 , blood collection , government (linguistics) , outbreak , medical emergency , intensive care medicine , virology , immunology , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , linguistics , philosophy
Abstract The role of blood transfusion services in a pandemic depends on the type, potential of community spread and risk of transfusion transmissibility. The COVID ‐19 pandemic is the biggest pandemic of the 21st century, affecting over 3 million people across the globe as of late April 2020. In India, the count of infected persons and deaths are rising gradually, and to prevent the community spread of the SARS ‐CoV‐2 virus, the Government of India announced national lockdown which affected the blood transfusion services also. There are more than 3000 decentralized blood centres all over the country. The major challenges to blood transfusion services are recruitment of healthy blood donors, follow‐up of donors and patients, inventory management, staff safety and adequacy for emergency work and consumable management. Blood transfusion services also participate in treatment of COVID ‐19 patients by convalescent plasma collection from recovered patients. Blood transfusion services should have a strategic plan to respond to challenges generated during a pandemic which focuses on shortage, wastage and supply of blood and components in a cost‐effective manner. In this review article, we will discuss the challenges to blood transfusion services of India due to COVID ‐19 pandemic and response to these challenges with experience to previous outbreaks.