STAFF REPORTER | EMN
DIMAPUR, AUGUST 10
One early summer in 2006 at half past one in the morning when the sky was still dark but heralded hope of a new dawn …the silence was broken by the noise of a white Gypsy King which screeched to a halt inside the deserted compound of District Hospital Dimapur, better known as Civil Hospital Dimapur. The occupants of the vehicle, one on the wheel and his co passenger,bolted out of as soon as the vehicle came to a stop. One of them carried a thermo-cooler.
They rushed inside, ran up the stairs and barged into the ward. The silence in the room was broken with the cry of the man who carried the thermo-cooler.
Stored inside the thermo-cooler were bags/pouches of blood bought and brought all the way from Guwahati, as fast as the vehicle had allowed them to. It was meant to save his only son, Mezen (name changed) from dying at the tender age of 9.
Blood. That was all the kid had needed. And yet by the time the father had managed to bring it from Guwahati, it was too late.
Seven years on, today a pouch of blood is just as invaluable as it was back then one early summer morning in 2006. And yet Guwahati is merely an alternate option these days.
A stark and much-needed transformation over the past seven years has resulted in the establishment of a Model Blood Bank at District Hospital Dimapur in November last year.
As of July 2013, the Model Blood Bank at District Hospital Dimapur had reportedly dispatched at least 500 units of blood every month since establishment. Currently it contributes six thousand units of blood or 60% of the total blood stock accumulated in Nagaland yearly.
Interestingly, Dimapur was not in the recommended list for a Model Blood Bank. Protocol demands that Blood Component Separation Unit (BCSU), which only a Model Blood Bank can house, be installed only in Medical Institutes.
At least five established Institutes in Assam and Manipur had jostled for the facility. Yet even without a single Medical Institute, Nagaland-or Dimapur, to be precise- was given preference over her immediate neighbors.
The authorities had noted the consistent record of blood donation, making it hold the position as the town registering the highest number of blood donors annually in the region. And hence, the first and only blood bank in Nagaland with BCSU facilities also became the first of its kind in the country to be housed outside a Medical Institute.
Medical Officer of Model Blood Bank Dimapur, and also known as Dr Dracula in the medical circle, Dr Temsu told Eastern Mirror that today the Model Blood Bank Dimapur was ready to meet the demands of all the districts of Nagaland.
“We have sufficient stock and now it is our dream that the blood and component segregation facility will reach every part of Nagaland within the next two years,” he said.
Proposals and negotiations with Nagaland State Transport and top police officials are already under process in order to facilitate the easy and cheap transportation of blood to other districts from Dimapur. “We want to make it affordable and also to reach their doorstep,” he shared.
And yet, any proposal of such kind needs approval from the Blood Transfusion Council of Nagaland, which is headed by the Commissioner and Secretary of Health and Family Welfare.
The BCSU facility, the cost of which is estimated to be worth around Rs 1.5 crore, and its “maintenance and consumables” are being funded by the National AIDS Control Organization.
Even the additional manpower has been provided by the National Rural Health Mission under NACO guidelines. The state government’s only contribution has been to allot space inside the District Hospital Dimapur to house the Model Blood Bank.
Currently, there are only three licensed blood banks-one each in Dimapur, Kohima and Mokokchung- in Nagaland. And yet donation/transfusion of blood to patients in private and unlicensed hospitals and health clinics are rampant.
Such unregulated practices, despite having established licensed blood banks, have also cast aspersions over the government’s sincerity and determination to streamline and nurse a blessing it had been gifted with. Agencies or schemes like NACO and NRHM are meant to go away one day. Question is, what next?
Repeated calls made to the Nagaland Minister for Health and Family Welfare went unanswered and unreturned.
