Mumbai: The state health department is ramping up efforts to promote e-RaktKosh — the central govt portal launched in 2016, which provides quick information on blood availability. While blood banks are mandated to update the platform daily, experts say its impact remains limited in the city, where hospitals routinely direct patients’ families to secure blood donations on their own.
“We are organising a blood donation camp at Mantralaya next week, where health minister Prakash Abitkar will make a statement on the e-RaktKosh initiative for greater awareness,” said an official from the blood cell division of the Directorate of Health Services.
A blood transfusion officer at a BMC hospital said, “As a portal, it is effective in showing the data, but private hospitals refuse to accept blood from other centres when patients are in need.” Dr Shruti Kamdi, in charge of SRCC blood bank, noted that while hospitals are mandated to update e-RaktKosh, few actively rely on it. “Most private hospitals require NAT-tested blood, which screens for Hepatitis B and C, and HIV. Only a handful of centres conduct this test. If we don’t have the required blood units in stock, we arrange for voluntary donors or reach out to private facilities that perform NAT testing,” she said. The processing cost for NAT-tested blood is around Rs 2,900, a charge patients must bear.
Vinay Shetty from the NGO Life Blood Council said the most common practice when a private hospital does not have adequate stock is to ask patients’ relatives to arrange for donors. “In the event there is no relative, they approach other banks,” he said.
Even at civic-run hospitals, where patient volume is high, the portal plays a limited role. “Tertiary care BMC hospitals provide the relatives with a list of blood banks and ask them to source blood themselves,” said the BMC officer.
Shetty added that private setups also routinely refuse to share blood with govt hospitals. The BMC officer confirmed this, saying: “They can’t deny blood by law, but justify it by saying they need to reserve units for their own patients.” Dr Anand Deshpande, a transfusion medicine consultant at PD Hinduja Hospital, said: “When a hospital has surplus blood units, it is protocol to provide them to other hospitals.”