Narayana Health – SRCC Children’s Hospital launches dedicated blood bank

Gamma rays irradiation facility to prevent complications while blood transfusion, capacity of 400 litres and will scale up further to 900 litres

Narayana Health – SRCC Children’s Hospital in Mumbai launched a blood bank at the hospital. The blood bank will have storage capacity of 400 litres of blood and it can be scaled up to 900 litres going forward. The state-of-the-art blood bank is spread over 2000 sq ft of space, largest in any paediatric hospitals in the city. The blood bank will also have a unique technology which can eradicate any complexities in blood through ‘Gamma Rays Irradiation’ technique, which will help to prevent any complexities during transfusion of blood in children.

Dr Zarin Bharucha, Chairperson, Blood Bank Federation of Bombay Blood Bank and representative of WHO, at the inauguration of the blood bank said, “We congratulate NH- SRCC Children’s Hospital for such a novel concept. Mumbai needs over 12 lakh units of blood but currently we get only 8 lakh units of blood. Regular blood donors are also very less in number. Would like to also urge people to come forward and give gift of giving life to the needy one’s by donating blood.”

The hospital has also launched blood donation camp between June 11 to 15, 2018 on the eve of World Blood Donor Day, which will be conducted world over on June 14, 2018.

Dr Purna Kurkure, Medical Director, Narayana Health SRCC Children’s Hospital said, “Generally, a blood bank and blood donation camps are conducted for adults only and no one thinks about need of blood for a child’s critical health conditions. This blood bank will provide blood to children from our hospital as well as any child in Mumbai who needs emergency blood. We dedicate the blood bank to the children of Mumbai city.”

Transfusion-Associated-Graft-Versus-Host-Disease (TA-GvHD) is a rare but usually fatal complication of blood transfusion and occurs when lymphocytes in the donor’s blood engraft in a susceptible recipient proliferates and damage organs. Lymphocytes are one of several types of white blood cells in a person’s immune system.

Dr Kalpana Velaskar, Head of department, Transfusion Medicine, said, “To prevent TA-GvHD, especially in children undergoing blood transfusion, the blood bank is equipped with Gamma Ray irradiation technology.”