A letter to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
From Jan Swasthya Sahyog

To Keshav Desiraju
Dear Sir,
I am writing to you after a long time. I wanted to tell you about an impending serious crisis for rural India. 
We talked about the problem of poor availability of blood in rural areas when you visited Ganiyari. NACO seems to be worried only about blood safety showing no concern for its availability for people. Recently, this situation of poor availability has worsened further with blood bags, which we all could use to bleed donors to transfuse sick patients with urgent need of blood, going out of the market completely. Only licensed blood banks can buy these bags from the market and these blood banks are just too few and distant from people and rural health facilities.

We had been making a plea that Unbanked Directed Blood transfusion (UDBT) should be allowed for emergency situations even for civilians in rural areas. The Indian Army already allows this for its people. In the absence of this, people will die in hundreds without emergency blood transfusions in rural areas. The rural areas are far from blood banks and blood storage units. 

Very frankly, many of us, concerned as we have been for the lives of those people who need health care, with women who have undergone post- partum hemorrhage, or with severe falciparum malaria , or with sickle cell anemia or with surgical emergencies , have been bleeding. The voluntary donors in  emergency situations and transfusing them. Now with bags going out of the market, this single thread by which we could do this ethical yet illegal act is also gone. 

We are in the process of filing a petition in the supreme court along with the Associations of rural surgeons of India. but the courts take their own time , and may not deliver.
Tell us, what do we do?  

Source: reprohealth list serve

from Jan Swasthya Abhiyan 
Date: 13 Aug 2013

PHM India, including a large number of public health professionals, has sent an Open Letter to Prime Minister on the issue of access to essential medicines in India. The letter reminds him of his announcement during last year's (2012) Independence Day Speech that free medicines would be distributed through government hospitals and health centres. Click here for better and the list of organisations and individuals and individuals who have endorsed the letterRead More