Access to safe blood is mandated by law, and is the primary responsibility of NACO. The specific objective of the blood safety programme is to ensure reduction in the transfusion associated with HIV transmission to 0.5 percent, while making available safe and quality blood within one hour of requirement in a health facility.

However, there is a serious mismatch between demand and availability of blood in the country: against 8.5 million units/year requirement, the availability is only 4.4 million units/year. Another concern is that voluntary blood donation is only

52 percent. NACO is committed to bridge the gap in the availability and improve quality of blood under NACP-III. To achieve these objectives NACO plans to:

• Raise voluntary blood donation to 90 percent
• Establish blood storage centres in Community Health Centres
• Expand external quality assessment services for blood screening
• Quality management in blood transfusion services
• Sensitise clinicians on optimum use of blood, blood components and products
• Add 39 blood banks in districts that do not have blood transfusion facility
• Establish blood storage centres in 3222 community care centres
• Provide refrigerated vans in 500 districts for networking with blood storage centres
• Establish additional model blood banks in 22 states; 10 are functional already
• Set up additional Blood Component Separation Units (BCSU) in 80 tertiary care hospitals and separate at least 50 percent of the collection at all BCSUs (162) into components
• Promote autologous blood donation
• Liaise with Indian Red Cross Society and Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports to promote voluntary blood donation among the youth
• Set up 32 model blood banks in various states
• Liaise with the Indian Medical Council (IMC) to mandate the requirement of a department of transfusion medicine in all medical colleges and appropriate transfusion practices in the syllabus of MD/MS clinical subjects
• Establish one additional plasma fractionation facility in the country
• Establish four Centres of Excellence in blood transfusion services in the four metros in order to cater to any region of the country in time of a crisis
• Introduce accreditation of blood banks

The activities and functioning of a large network of blood banks and blood component separation facilities in the country are supervised at district, state and national level.

Red Cross Society, Nehru Yuva Kendra and National Service Scheme organise voluntary blood donation camps in all districts. These camps are coordinated by district nodal officers (DNOs) in charge of AIDS control programme. DNO also supervises implementation of blood bank techniques.

Joint Director (Blood Safety), Deputy Director (Blood Safety) and Drug Inspector (FDA) in State AIDS Control and Prevention Societies, State Blood Transfusion Council and external technical experts ensure in a joint supervisory plan that each of the blood bank in the state is supervised once in three months. On a random basis the team also visits voluntary blood donation camps in the state.

At the national level the supervision is three-fold: by the blood safety division in NACO, National Blood Transfusion Council (NBTC) and Technical

Resource Group 

(TRG) on Blood Safety. Based on the laid down indicators, states are rated as poor performing, average performing and better performing. The poor performing states are visited by the consultant (Blood Safety) once in a quarter; other states are visited randomly for supervision. NBTC and TRG on Blood Safety provide feedback to NACO on the overview of blood transfusion services twice a year.

Status note on Blood Safety