BENGALURU: Tippeswamy, a farmer from Ballari, has been somewhat lucky, if you can call it that. He managed to arrange for bone marrow for his eight-year-old son, who is being treated for leukaemia at Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology, through private donors even though it was expensive.
Part of his son's treatment was covered by the State government's Vajpayee Arogyashree scheme for BPL families. "But the remaining expenses, including for blood... we have to arrange for them on our own," Tippeswamy said.
He could have obtained all of that from Kidwai, but the hospital has simply not been able to replenish its stocks of blood and blood components as donors have dwindled due fear of contracting Covid-19.
Before the pandemic broke out, the blood bank at Kidwai procured 100 units of blood from 10 blood donation camps a month. Now, the hospital needs at least one camp a week, but there is none scheduled for the next fortnight, an official told TNIE on Monday.
Its current stock of 340 pints of RBC and 220 pints of platelets will suffice for 20 patients scheduled to undergo chemotherapy over the week and will run out by Saturday, said a hospital official.
Nearly 80 percent of patients are BPL people who depend on government schemes, director of Kidwai hospital Dr C Ramachandra told TNIE. The hospital is always in need of blood, he says.
With Kidwai running out of blood, patients would have no choice but to approach private blood banks, which charge up to Rs 1,000 for a unit, or arrange for donors themselves, which is difficult, says Alphonse Kurien, president of Lions Club Sanjaynagar. Earlier, they organised six blood donation camps a month, but have barely managed four in the past three months due to the lockdown.