advertisement
At one of Delhi's biggest government hospitals, Shalini (name changed) is losing hope. Staring at her son covered in bandages, lying on a gurney, the middle-aged woman from Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad is in tears as she tells FIT, "They have asked us to arrange for a blood donor."
A few minutes later, we see three boys approach and start negotiating with Shalini and her daughter. We later learn that the boys are 'professional blood donors', and one of them has agreed to be their donor for Rs 3,500.
Donating blood in exchange for money was banned in India in 1996. However, paying 'professional blood donors' to meet this requirement is still fairly common.
"We come across one or two such cases daily," says Dr Devesh Dubey, MD Transfusion Medicine, who works at one of the biggest blood banks in India's capital.
To see how easy it would be to 'arrange' a paid blood donor, FIT went to one of the busiest government hospitals in Delhi.
This is where we met Shalini. As we strike up a conversation and tell her we're looking for a blood donor too, her daughter tells us that they had spoken to a person who said he would 'arrange' a donor for them. She tells us we would find him at a tea stall near the closest metro station, and that he could help us too.
All leads – from vendors to patient families and bootleg pharmacists – point us to Ashok (name changed). He sits, surrounded by 4-5 men, and is guarded when we make inquiries.
He begins with the following line of questioning:
Where is our patient admitted?
What surgery do they need?
Why couldn't we just get friends and relatives to donate?
Posing as a patient's friend, the FIT reporter gives him preplanned answers.
In the emergency ward.
He had an accident and needs surgery on his leg.
I donated blood a month ago. He has no family here, and everyone else we reached out to has refused.
Why are families of patients forced to seek help from someone like Ashok? Why do so many resort to paying a random person a lump sum to donate blood at such personal risk?
In most cases, if the patient is from out of town, they do not have friends and family in the city, and it's very difficult for them to find donors.
Speaking to FIT, Neeta Kohli, a 76-year-old cancer survivor living in Delhi, says that when their 30-year-old domestic worker, Sumit, met with an accident, "we were told there is internal bleeding, and that he needed at least 4 units of blood."
Neeta goes on to explain that they couldn't donate it themselves because she was a cancer survivor, her husband was over 80 years old, and their kids lived overseas.
She says, that's when a friend suggested that his driver knew someone who can arrange it immediately. "We ultimately paid more than Rs 5,000 for a unit."
Sometimes, even when the patient has family and friends around, they refuse to donate.
"When you ask for donations, relatives also turn them down. It's the bitter truth," says Dr Dubey. He says this is primarily because of a lack of awareness around blood donation safety. People fear they'll get weak, have some health issues, or contract infections if they donate blood, he explains.
He goes on to talk about a case he encountered a few months ago. "I had a woman come in with her seven-year-old son. He had a brain tumor and needed surgery. She offered to donate, but her haemoglobin levels were too low, so she didn't qualify."
"The father said he'll have weakness if he donates blood. I was stunned. The woman started sobbing, and I felt helpless," he says.
"The boy only needed three units of blood. I spoke to the social worker attached to the hospital to see if we could sign off on it without replacement, and we gave it to them."
According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India's annual requirement for blood is around 1.5 crore units per year, while in reality, only around 1 crore units are available.
This gap in supply and demand of blood poses a major public health crisis in the country. For example, around 70 percent of postpartum hemorrhage (PPH)-related deaths in India are due to lack of immediate availability of blood.
This gap only widened during the COVID pandemic, with lockdowns putting a pause on blood donation camps, and the general air of health anxiety.
While donation rates have gone back to pre-pandemic levels, explains Jayadeep Gupta founder of Friends2Support, a portal for voluntary blood donation, it is not uncommon for families to struggle to find blood.
So essentially, what the booming business of paid blood donation is doing is just filling a chasm that's begging to be filled.
Paid blood donation is not the best of practices, for both recipients as well as the donors, say experts. Unregulated buying and selling of blood ups the risk of contamination and deadly infections slipping through.
Moreover, in extreme cases, there have been reports of people, particularly migrant workers, being exploited and forced to give blood multiple times a week at the cost of their own health and wellbeing.
"The paid donors are generally young boys, between the ages of 20 and 25, from very poor backgrounds," says Dr Dubey.
"This will no doubt be detrimental to their health," he adds. Moreover, if caught, they face the risk of jail time.
The protocol is to ask every donor a set of questions before we take their blood.
What, then, happens to the families who desperately need blood when their donors are deferred?
Dr Dubey says they are referred to the social workers attached to the hospital to get them help.
"In cases of emergency, at government hospitals, the patient is given blood no-questions-asked. All the blood that is given from our blood bank is given free of charge, no matter how many units the patient needs," says a senior official at one of India's leading government hospitals who didn't want to be named.
It all essentially boils down to the gap in supply and demand. The solution, according to experts is to encourage voluntary donations, along with promoting better supply chain management.
"Like we pay tax, everyone who qualifies to should donate blood regularly. Only then can we stop these kinds of practices," says Dr Dubey.
According to Tuli, to get people to donate blood voluntarily, it is important to inform people about the scarcity, and the requirements of patients whose lives are dependent on their donations.
To make this happen, "More mobile blood donation vans, camps, and most importantly, increasing public trust in the safety of blood donation, can all help," she adds.
In fact, it might be the only way people like Shalini's son, Sumit, and others like them can have a fighting chance at life without having to shell out a hefty sum, while also putting someone else's wellbeing at risk.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)
Published: undefined