For the past few weeks, the blood bank’s situation has been in the red, no pun intended. And the red alert, launched last week by the Blood Donors Association, has had very little effect. Health centers are severely short of blood.
According to Dewanand Hossen, President of the Blood Donors Association, the amount of blood available was already very low and with the winter, many of the potential donors are suffering from certain health problems, such as the flu. As a result, they are taking medications such as antibiotics and therefore cannot donate blood.
This is not helped by the national Covid 19 vaccination campaign. Initially, vaccinated people could donate blood 28 days after the first dose. But since the second dose of the vaccine is due after the same number of days, donating blood becomes more complicated.
A request was therefore made to the concerned authorities so that those who were vaccinated could donate blood after 25 days.
But things have become more complicated again with the Sinopharm vaccine, as Dewanand Hossen explains. “With the Sinopharm vaccine, the second dose comes 21 days after the first dose. So people who have had this vaccine have to wait longer. So we have made a new request to the relevant authorities to review the number of days. This is a significant factor,” said our interlocutor.
He gives the example of the blood drive organized yesterday, Sunday, August 1 in Bambous. “We were able to collect 73 pints of blood. We could have had another fifty. People came but we had to refuse their blood because the time between their vaccines anti-covid does not match our regulations.”
So he hopes that the authorities will quickly address the issue to alleviate the lack of blood in our hospitals.
