National Thalassemia Welfare Society flags shortage of necessary kits for testing thalassemia patients at a few Delhi hospitals

By Shalini Bhardwaj
New Delhi [India], March 14 (ANI): The National Thalassemia Welfare Society has written a letter to Delhi's Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena over what it termed acute shortage of necessary kits for essential test for blood transfusion in thalassemia patients in three major hospitals of Delhi government.
The BSA Hospital and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital that come under the government of Delhi are facing acute shortage of necessary kits that are necessary for essential tests for blood transfusion in thalassemia patients.
According to the letter that was sent a few days ago, the society also mentioned about the unavailability of kits at Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital of Delhi Government. They said it was after the intervention of the LG that the kits were made available for thalassemic patients.
"You would remember very recently on 2.3.24 we raised the issue of non-availability of necessary kits (Phenotype matching) for essential test for Blood transfusion in thalassemia patients at DDUH," reads the letter written by Dr JS Arora, General Secretary, National Thalassemia Welfare Society.
"With your kind intervention the matter was solved (though temporarily) and the blood was made available for transfusion on following working day," he mentioned in the letter.
"Now it has been brought to our notice that the patients registered at BSA hospital & Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital have been refused blood transfusion due to Acute Shortage necessary kits (Phenotype matching) for essential test for Blood transfusion in thalassemia patients at DDUH, BSAH and Guru Teg Bahadur hospitals are facing similar problems for over 6 - 9 months," it said further
"Patients have become anemic and their spleen is enlarging, once spleen enlarges blood requirement further increases and chances of getting infections."
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), thalassemia is an inherited (passed from parents to children through genes) blood disorder caused when the body doesn't make enough of a protein called haemoglobin, an important part of red blood cells.
It goes on to say that when there isn't enough haemoglobin, the body's red blood cells don't function properly and they last shorter periods of time, so there are fewer healthy red blood cells traveling in the bloodstream. (ANI)