The State Blood Transfusion Council’s (SBTC) 31st managing committee meeting was held here on Wednesday under chairmanship of Health and Family Welfare Commissioner and Secretary Dr Pramod Kumar Meherda.
In the meeting, a budget of Rs 28. 75 crore was approved for the 2019-20 financial year and discussions were held on different programmes to be taken up by the council.
Dr Meherda stressed on holding more and more voluntary blood donation camps in the State to achieve the target of collecting 4.5 lakh units of blood in 2019-20.
He also informed that seven blood collecting vans would be procured for seven medical college hospitals, besides the Government Hospitals, Rourkela and Bargarh and advised the officials to keep coordination with the private hospital blood banks.
Notably, there are 83 blood banks in the State and 55 of them are under the State Government.
Also, 16 blood component separation units are functioning in the State.
It might be mentioned here that the State Government has made provision to provide blood free of cost to the patients who are being treated in Government hospitals and Rs 500 travel allowances for the Hemoglobinopathy patients. As many as 11,706 patients have been benefitted from March 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019, informed Dr Meherda.
National Health Mission (NHM), Odisha Director Shalini Pandit, SBTC Director Dr Manas Samantray, Finance Department Additional Secretary Gadhadar Nanda, Drugs Controller Mamina Patnaik and other senior officials were present in the meeting.
