Andhra officials taking steps to enhance blood collection

VIJAYAWADA: The Covid-19 pandemic had affected blood collection in the State and at the same time the requirement of the life saving liquid also raised many folds. Meanwhile, the State government has been taking steps to improve blood collection by strengthening and streamlining the procedure.

Andhra Pradesh State AIDS Control Society (APSACS) has decided to enhance blood banks by upgrading 10 blood storage units as well as setting up 65 new blood storage units within three months with the support of the funds released by the National Health  Mission (NHM) for 2021-22. The government was also planning to implement a hub and spoke model by bringing all the blood centres under one roof in the State.

The State has a total of 174 blood centres, of which 40 are government and the remaining 134 are private. Moreover, 112 blood storage units are available in the government sector and only one is available in the private sector. Adding to these, 13 blood transportation vehicles are also kept available in all erstwhile districts.  

Moreover, the NHM also sanctioned funds for upgradation of another 10 blood storage units as blood centres and also 25 new blood storage units for 2022-23 FY and to upgrade seven  blood storage units in area hospitals as blood centres.

The government has been taking measures to bring three new component centres at Rajahmundry, Vizianagaram and Chittoor into operation by the end of the financial year in addition to 11 component centres available in 11 medical college hospitals. Project director G Naveen Kumar will visit across the State for quality check of the blood centres. Moreover, a team had visited the largest and only Metro Blood Centres (MBC) in the country located in Chennai. The project director said that high-end equipment will be installed and Integral Centre for Hemoglobinopathy and Haemophilia (ICHH) will be set up in four centres in the State at Rs 40 lakh.