App on blood donation on the cards

​Hyderabad: The State government is all set to fine tune its existing blood donation and storage policy, to prevent loss of life due to lack of blood in critical cases. It initiated a slew of initiatives, including a mobile app.

The Medical and Health Department would be coming up with a mobile application. This app will record the details blood donors. In turn, whenever the donor needs blood for him/her self, family members or friends, the donor can get blood form the blood bank.

“This is literally depositing cash in one’s own account in a bank and withdraw the same whenever he wants,” said Medial and Health Principal Secretary Poonam Malakondaiah. The new initiatives would be further linked to a high-end mobile ambulance,

which will be launched soon with a focus to encourage young people to donate blood and make them part of saving lives of thousands of people in the State. For this, the government has approved to provide one high-end mobile ambulance costing about Rs 40 lakh, to each district.

These ambulances would go around to various educational institutions and places of youth gatherings so that they could just walk in and donate blood. That apart, it was decided to add 33 new blood banks under National Health Mission to the existing 35 blood banks.