Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik announced the establishment of two blood component separation units at Koraput and Keonjhar at a State-level function organised here on the occasion of the National Voluntary Blood Donation Day.
Patnaik said, “Blood is precious and availability of safe and adequate blood in times of need can save millions of lives. As there is no way found till now to produce blood artificially, voluntary blood donation is the only way out to save patients requiring blood. We, therefore, need to appropriately inform, educate and sensitize people for voluntary blood donation. Voluntary blood donation has immense utilitarian value in modern times. There can be no virtue greater than saving lives.”
He further said non-remunerated repeat voluntary blood donors are the safest source of blood.
Therefore, we have to promote voluntary blood donation programme to achieve a goal of 100 per cent, so that we can gradually eliminate replacement donation in blood banks for making a safer unit of blood available for the patients.”
“The State government is opening blood storage centres at all the first referral units for greater accessibility of blood, especially JSSK and accident areas. We have made mandatory in our State to screen all the blood units by ElISA method which is a very sensitive and effective methods of screening TTIs from blood. Our Government is seriously planning to adopt the latest technology for screening of blood in all the blood banks of the State.
All the blood banks have been connected with e-blood banking systems for online data transfer, and total quality management, which is also open for the citizens for live data of blood stocks in blood banks. This has been a model in the country to emulate,” he said.
Patnaik announced that nucleic amplification test facility will be available at three medical colleges and capital hospital. This will help in early detection of seromark diseases like HIV, Hepatitis B & C in donor blood.
Health Minister Dr Damodar Rout presided over the function organized at the Jayadev Bhawan, where MP Prasana Patsani, MlAs Ashok Panda, Bijoy Mohanty and Red Cross secretary Mangala Mohanty spoke. OSACS director Dhiren Patnaik gave the welcome address and Dr Rajalaxmi Mohanty, Director OSTC gave vote of thanks. The Chief Minister also gave away prizes to various organisations.