The Gujarat Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) is in talks with the National Institute of Biologicals (NIB) to implement the much awaited Haemovigilance Programme of India (HvPI) in the state to achieve blood safety through its 145 blood banks and 134 blood storage centres.

Blood banks and hospitals are expected to enroll in HvPI, though voluntarily, to ensure the safety of donors and recipients during blood transfusion to avoid and prevent adverse events. However, the irony is that after its launch five years ago, only 900 out of around 3,000 licensed blood banks in the country have enrolled.

HvPI aims to identify trends in adverse reactions and events, thereby to form transfusion policy, target areas for improvement in practice, stimulate research and raise awareness of transfusion hazards.

There are a total of 3,000 licensed blood banks in the country which need to be registered with HvPI for blood safety.

As per the HvPI, blood banks are facilitated with a unique ID and password through an online platform developed and implemented by NIB in collaboration with ministry of information and technology with support from National Informatics Centre (NIC).

HvPI at the national level was launched on December 10, 2012 by NIB, functioning under the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) to track adverse reactions associated with blood transfusion and blood product administration.

Further on this, the union health ministry has also upscaled and consolidated the project by launching haemovigil and donor-vigil softwares as a part of expanding HvPI towards complete reporting of adverse transfusion reactions in both blood recipients and blood donors.

With the coming up of National Blood Donor Vigilance Programme (NBDVP), HvPI has further broadened access with blood donors and recipients comprehensively in all blood banks across the country which was earlier restricted till reporting of transfusion reactions in blood recipients only.

This would broaden the scope of Haemovigilance in the country which started from a scratch with the sole purpose of collecting data related to blood transfusion reactions from blood donors.

Though having been launched in June 2015, NBDVP is envisaged to complement HvPI which currently generates reports on blood recipient related adverse reaction through a Transfusion Reaction Reporting Form (TRRF). This is then linked via haemovigil software to NIB.