No key equipment at govt hospitals

Hyderabad: Due to the dengue outbreak in the city, the demand for blood at blood banks in the city, both government and private, has increased lately.

In such dire situations, the need of the hour is provisioning for Single Platelet Donor Transfusions (SDPT), which all the leading government hospitals in the city are lacking. Due to which, the patients are been referred to private diagnostic centers that charge exorbitant amount for SDPT.

Speaking about the need for SDPT Dr M Govardhan, Senior Consultant Physician at Care Hospital in Nampally, said, "There are two types of platelets, one is Single Donor Platelets and the other is Random Donor Platelets. Four to five units of RDPT is equal to one unit of SDPT.

SDP with one unit is able to provide around 20,000 platelets, whereas RDPT may require a large volume to match its result. Disadvantages of RDPT are that it could cause more reactions compared to SDPT, and the increment rate with RDPT is very less, which is around 5,000 units."

Govardhan further said, "Platelet transfusion is useful only when the count is critically low, less than 15,000, or if there is a progressively fall in platelets or if the patient is having a bleeding manifestation. That is the time when SDPT is necessary or else RDPT can be given."

In response to an RTI filed by activist Robin Zaccheus, The Telangana State AIDS Control Society responded with a list of hospitals like Gandhi Hospital, Osmania Hospital and MNJ Cancer Hospital that are supposed to have component separation NACO blood banks mandatorily. However, none of the above hospitals has SDPT systems.

Dr P Shravan Kumar, superintendent at Gandhi Hospital, said, "We have an SDPT machine, but there is no technician for operating it. Considering the situation of dengue, there is no sudden need of SDPT here."

Dr B Nagendra, superintendent at Osmania Hospital, said, "We have RDPT service, but not SDPT. We had to send the SDPT machine to Adilabad for an emergency. We are transfusing cases that have a platelet count less than 10,000 else we are managing most of our cases with RDPT."