After 5 days, couple gets blood donor in Mumbai to save unborn child

Fear of contracting Covid-19 is keeping people from donating blood, which in turn is leading to critical medical situations and a shortage in blood banks, particularly

Fear of contracting Covid-19 is keeping people from donating blood, which in turn is leading to critical medical situations and a shortage in blood banks, particularly of negative blood groups. The family of an unborn child, who has been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder and urgently needs intrauterine blood transfusion, had to wait for five days until they found a donor on Monday.

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Suwarna Pawar, who is seven months pregnant, was admitted to Wadia Maternity Hospital in Parel last week. The foetus has been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder, is anaemic and to survive, requires intrauterine blood transfusion (a procedure by which blood transfusion is done through the umbilical cord). Pawar has A- (negative) blood, but the foetus needs O- blood.

“I brought my wife to the hospital on Wednesday and since then we have been trying to find a donor. On Saturday, a person donated his blood, but due to some medical issues, doctors couldn’t use the blood,” said Pawar’s husband, Dadasaheb.

Wadia Maternity Hospital didn’t have O- blood and were unable to arrange for the blood despite contacting their registered O- blood donors. “We have over 100 registered O- blood donors but none of them are agreeing to come to the hospital to donate blood because of the fear of contracting Covid-19. We are helpless,” said a doctor from Wadia Maternity Hospital.

Finally, on Monday, Wadia Maternity Hospital told the Pawars that if the transfusion could not be arranged within 24 hours, the foetus would develop further complications.

Following the intervention of this reporter, 39-year-old O- donor Prashant Sawant from Tilak Nagar agreed to donate the blood. With the help of a friend who drove Sawant to the hospital, Sawant was able to donate his blood.

“It was my duty to save the life of the child who hasn’t even seen the light of the day. Just like the Covid-19 pandemic, we are also facing another health crisis — shortage of blood. There is no supplement for blood so people need to come forward to donate blood,” said Sawant, who works in an IT company.

The hospital is expected to perform the intrauterine transfusion today.

Two more O- donors have also been arranged through SBTC and the Twitter handle of Blood Donors India (@BloodDonorsIn).

Previously, HT had inquired with major blood banks like King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital, Tata Memorial Hospital and Sir JJ Mahanagar Raktapedhi, but none of them had O- blood. According to the State Blood Transfusion Council (SBTC), only one unit of O- blood was available at Rajawadi Hospital and 44 units of O- blood components were available at different blood banks. However, these are not suitable for intrauterine transfusion since they are not freshly donated.

“For intrauterine transfusion, we need freshly donated blood which can’t be more than five days old. All the blood components that are available, are quite old,” said a blood medical officer from Wadia Maternity Hospital, where two major surgeries had to be stalled due to unavailability of O- and A- blood.

“Currently, we a crisis in [the supply of] A-, AB- AB+ and O-. We have taken enough precautionary measures to prevent any possible transmission of Covid during donation,” said Dr Thorat. In Mumbai, there is not one whole unit of A- blood in any blood bank and there are only 14 units of blood component of A- in the city.

As HT had reported on Monday, fear of contracting Covid-19 has led to a 60% fall in blood donation in the city. Almost 80% of the blood banks in Mumbai have no supplies.