EWMSC blood bank to extend hours to 8 pm

SHAS­TRI BOODAN

GML Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

The blood bank at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) is ex­pect­ed to ex­tend its op­er­at­ing hours to 8 pm to en­cour­age more peo­ple to do­nate blood and help meet de­mand for emer­gency med­ical care.

North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh an­nounced the pro­posed ex­ten­sion on Sat­ur­day dur­ing a blood dri­ve host­ed by the Ob­stet­rics and Gy­nae­co­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go at the EWM­SC.

Gopeesingh said arrange­ments were be­ing fi­nalised to in­tro­duce a shift sys­tem, with reg­is­tered nurse Hadiya Adams and her team work­ing to im­ple­ment the change.

“We’re look­ing to ex­tend the hours for col­lec­tion up to 8 p.m., and Nurse Adams is work­ing with her team to ef­fect that,” he said.

He said the ini­tia­tive was be­ing pur­sued in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dr Shiv­ir Moo­sai, head of the Na­tion­al Blood Trans­fu­sion Ser­vice, as ef­forts con­tin­ued to im­prove blood col­lec­tion ser­vices.

Gopeesingh said the EWM­SC blood bank cur­rent­ly col­lects be­tween 600 and 700 units of blood month­ly.

He ex­plained that do­nat­ed blood un­der­goes screen­ing for sev­er­al dis­eases, in­clud­ing HIV, syphilis, he­pati­tis B, he­pati­tis C and Cha­gas dis­ease, to help en­sure the safe­ty of the blood sup­ply.

The NCRHA is al­so work­ing to es­tab­lish a sys­tem to in­form donors when their screen­ing re­sults are nor­mal, al­low­ing them to re­tain the in­for­ma­tion for fu­ture ref­er­ence.

Gopeesingh said col­lect­ed blood was processed in­to com­po­nents, in­clud­ing cry­o­pre­cip­i­tate, fresh frozen plas­ma and packed red blood cells, which are used in trans­fu­sions and to sup­port pa­tients un­der­go­ing ma­jor sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures.

He com­mend­ed nurs­es and oth­er health­care work­ers across the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties for their ef­forts to col­lect and process blood to meet pa­tients’ needs.

Gopeesingh es­ti­mat­ed that the na­tion­al blood bank­ing ser­vice costs the State ap­prox­i­mate­ly $25 mil­lion, cov­er­ing staffing, test­ing and oth­er op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es.

He de­scribed the ex­pen­di­ture as mon­ey well spent, giv­en the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing a re­li­able blood sup­ply, and said the NCRHA would con­tin­ue to pro­vide the fa­cil­i­ties and re­sources need­ed to sup­port the blood bank’s op­er­a­tions.

The pro­posed ex­ten­sion to 8 pm is ex­pect­ed to give prospec­tive donors greater flex­i­bil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly those un­able to vis­it dur­ing the fa­cil­i­ty’s cur­rent op­er­at­ing hours. The change is ex­pect­ed to be im­ple­ment­ed this year, sub­ject to the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of arrange­ments.