In order to to improve the blood transfusion services in the country, the National Blood Transfusion Council (NBTC) will be setting up metro blood banks in New Delhi and Chennai as centres of excellence by the end of this year. A fund allocation of around Rs. 400 crore has been allocated for both these centres.   

MoUs for this likely to be signed soon with the governments of Delhi and Tamil Nadu. This will be followed by the procurements of equipment and construction of the building which would get completed by the year end, according to a senior NBTC official.  

Plans are also in the offing to set up a metro blood bank in Mumbai for which resources have to be identified to help materialise the plan, according to a health ministry source.

The centres will have state of the art facilities with blood components preparation and capacity to process more than 100,000 units of blood annually.

Governments of Delhi and Tamil Nadu have identified land for the construction of these centres. Design DPR Consultants for these sites have been identified to initiate work at these sites.

Access to safe blood to all the needy is the primary responsibility of National AIDS Control Organization (NACO). Currently, it is supported by a network of 1103 blood banks including 132 Blood Component Separation Units (BCSU) and 10 Model Blood Banks. NACO supported the installation of blood component separation units and also funded modernisation of all major blood banks at state and district levels.

In addition to constantly enhancing awareness about the need to access safe blood and blood products, NACO has supported the procurement of equipments, test kits and reagents as well as the recurring expenditure of government blood banks and those run by voluntary/charitable organisations that were modernised.

National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) is implementing a scheme for modernisation of blood banks by providing one time equipments for testing and storage as well as annual recurrent grant for support of manpower, kits and consumables.

During NACP I and II, blood banks in all districts of the country were taken up under the scheme for modernisation of blood banks, except for the newly created districts. In NACP III, 39 newly created districts have been identified with not a blood bank. NACO has taken the initiative with the respective state health department for setting up a blood bank in these districts.