In its ongoing drive towards non-compliance to Drugs Act, the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has conducted inspections on 15 civic run blood banks in the past three months across the city of Mumbai and has taken action against five of them by suspending licenses of four municipal blood banks and cancelling license of one of them. There are around 60 blood banks in the city.
It was observed during the inspections that blood banks which collect and process less than 2000 units of blood annually have been suggested to be converted to blood storage centres. This requires the blood bank to apply for a separate license from the state FDA and identify an area of 10 square metre with separate areas demarcated for storage and testing of blood.
The Maharashtra State Blood Transfusion Council (SBTC) has also planned to roll out around 68 blood storage centres in remote districts of the state as part of its Blood-on-Call scheme. The scheme as of today has 130 blood storage centres functioning in coordination with healthcare institutions of the state.
With its call centre at Pune, Blood-on-Call scheme got started on January 7, 2014 following the formulation of a National Blood Policy in 2002 to ensure safe and adequate supply of blood to the patients.
This was aimed at strengthening network of blood storage units in rural areas with the government's strategy to set up one unit in the periphery of four primary healthcare centres. As per the programme, Maharashtra SBTC advices the government on technical matters to spearhead the programme.
Besides this, plan to set up blood storage centres need to be implemented as nearly 46 per cent of blood storage centres are concentrated in the four districts of Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune and Thane and the rest 54 per cent of blood storage centres are scattered in the remaining 30 districts of Maharashtra. This makes the rural areas inaccessible to a vital health component like blood.
Through this initiative, Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra today has seven blood storage centres with one blood bank which makes blood accessible to the remote rural areas nearby.
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