Need and Planning

One of the most important essential first move for blood donor recruitment is establishing clear goals by estimating pragmatically the blood need of the Country/State/Region/ Blood Bank. For a well established transfusion service, with a long history of success, knowledge of current patterns of blood usage and data of changes from year to year, it is a straightforward matter to project need into the future, to plan blood collection and recruit donors accordingly.The process is much more difficult at the beginning in regions or states where no data is available for any estimation at all. It is, therefore, quite natural that maiden attempts of donor recruitment may result in insufficient blood collection in reality. Surrounding every mountain peak, there are valleys and into these valleys one must go before climbing the peak. There are joys. There are disappointments. There will be success and there will be failure. Blood donor motivators should have a mental makeup to accept both the rough and the smooth. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. And, a beginning has to be made.There may be three principal reasons for failure in the first venture:

• Immature organisation
• Lack of clear goals
• Underestimation of blood need.

When there is no blood, suppressed need of blood would not come to the surface. Blood need will increase with the availability of blood. Even donor awareness campaigns may inculcate the sense of need of blood in the minds of the clinicians and surgeons resulting in irrational use of blood. That should be taken care of when blood would become easily available from the blood banks.There may be a number of approaches for the estimation of blood need. Some are simple and some are complex in character. Some may give an approximate idea and some may give a fairly accurate target. To start with a goal, however approximate, a target is badly needed to set the ball rolling.There are four approaches to estimate how much blood is needed:

• In relation to hospital beds
• In relation to total population
• In relation to medical facility available in the region
• In relation to past blood usage.

Ideally, if 2% of population donates blood, it will be more than sufficient to meet the need of a country like India. For a population of 100 crores (1000 million), 2 crores (20 million) of intending blood donor would be more than sufficient for the country by taking into consideration all possible allowances. The present estimated blood need of India is 80 lakh (8 million) units. In the first method the need of blood can be calculated as 3 to 15 units per hospital bed per year. It may also be calculated as 7 to 20 units per acute hospital bed per year. In the primary health centres, the need may be 3 units per bed per year, while at a super speciality surgical hospital the need may be as high as 25 - 30 units /bed /year. The golden mean may be worked out. With the introduction of open heart surgeries, liver transplants and treatment for oncological disorders in the country, the need of blood in different regions have increased.

The table below indicates the enormous variations of blood donor per 1000 population between different countries.