Department of Transfusion Medicine, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Puducherry, India.
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, New Delhi, India.
Transfus Apher Sci. 2021 Jun;60(3):103131. doi: 10.1016/j.transci.2021.103131. Epub 2021 Apr 15.
India has almost 3,000 blood centres collecting more than 11 million units annually. Maintaining blood supply during the COVID-19 pandemic is a huge challenge. We conducted a cross-sectional study by an online survey to analyse the variation of practices across blood centers of India during this pandemic. A total of 196 blood centers completely responded to the online survey. Most of the blood centres who responded were part of Government hospitals (60 %), part of an academic institutes (55.6 %) and were directly supporting a COVID hospital (67.5 %). Almost 95.4 % blood centers reported reduction of blood donation mainly due to lockdown (50 %) and inability to conduct camps (17.3 %). Scheduling blood donations was one of the most difficult to implement strategy for maintaining adequate blood donation (40.2 %). Blood center manpower management was also a challenge and upto 48 % blood centers operated in two batches to ensure social distancing in blood banks and reduce the risk of exposure. Hemato-oncology (36.8 %) and obstetrics (33.7 %) were major utilizer of blood during the pandemic. There were marked variations in use of PPE by blood banks staff as well as strategies adopted while conducting immunohematology tests on COVID-19 positive patients samples. This pandemic has highlighted some of the major limitations of the health services but blood services have risen to the challenge and strived to maintain the blood supply chain while ensuring blood donor and staff safety. The wide variations in the practices adopted highlights the need for uniform guidelines for blood services in future pandemics.
印度有近 3000 个血液中心，每年采集超过 1100 万个单位。在 COVID-19 大流行期间维持血液供应是一个巨大的挑战。我们通过在线调查进行了一项横断面研究，分析了印度各血液中心在这一大流行期间的做法差异。共有 196 个血液中心完全回复了在线调查。回应调查的血液中心大多是公立医院的一部分（60%），是学术机构的一部分（55.6%），并直接支持 COVID 医院（67.5%）。近 95.4%的血液中心报告说，由于封锁（50%）和无法开展活动（17.3%），献血量减少。安排献血是维持足够献血量的最困难策略之一（40.2%）。血液中心的人力管理也是一个挑战，多达 48%的血液中心分两批运作，以确保在血库中保持社交距离并降低暴露风险。血液中心在疫情期间，血液病（36.8%）和妇产科（33.7%）是用血的主要科室。血液库工作人员使用个人防护设备以及在对 COVID-19 阳性患者样本进行免疫血液学检测时所采用的策略存在明显差异。这场大流行凸显了卫生服务的一些主要局限性，但血液服务已经应对了挑战，努力维持血液供应链，同时确保献血者和工作人员的安全。所采用的实践方法存在广泛差异，这突出表明，未来的大流行需要制定统一的血液服务指南。
