Bloody waste: that's 1 of every 4 bottles of blood at GT hospital

One of every four bottles of collected blood goes to waste in the state-run GT hospital near Crawford market. In the past three years, one-fourth of the blood bags lying with the hospital's blood bank had to be disposed of, because they had reached their date of expiry. So says the hospital's response to a Right to Information (RTI) query, filed by a doctor from the hospital itself.

Although the hospital has 500 beds in all, it usually gets only around 125 to 150 patients. So the hospital's in-house requirement for blood is much less than its availability, said hospital sources. "A blood unit has 30 days of shelf life. We keep the other blood banks informed. In case of necessity, the blood can be sent from here," said a doctor from the blood bank.

Each bag of blood costs around Rs 450. Lakhs of rupees' worth in blood bags have been wasted by the hospital's blood bank in the past three years. From January to August in this year, 440 bags were collected, of which 324 were issued, and 98 were left over. In 2013, 955 bags were collected, of which 341 were wasted. Each blood bag contains 350 ml of blood.

Another reason for the wastage, however, is that the hospital does not have a license to break the blood into its components. So the hospital has no choice but to store whole blood. "These days whole blood is hardly in demand. Blood components, especially platelets, are more in demand. But we don't have a license for the separation of blood into its components," said the doctor.

Dr Sanjay Jadhav, director of the state blood transfusion council (SBTC), however, said that the wastage was "negligible". He added, "We need to think about emergencies as well. Twenty to 25 blood bottles need to be reserved for emergency cases."