In order to broaden its scope and reach outside India, the National Institute of Biologicals (NIB) will organise for the first time Continuing Medical Education (CME) programme outside the country on Haemovigilance Programme of India (HvPI) for blood bank officials.  It will initiate the same in Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan, to begin with.

An exploratory visit to Bhutan on the same shall be performed from December 6 to 9 to identify the stakeholders and discuss modalities for organizing CME on HvPI at National Referral Hospital, Thimphu, Bhutan.   

In this regard, Union health ministry had approved for an exploratory visit to Bhutan for organizing CME on HvPI for Dr Surinder Singh, director, NIB along with Dr Shakti Kumar Gupta, Medical Superintendent, Dr R P Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.

Aimed at raising awareness of transfusion hazards for safety related regulatory decisions in blood safety, NIB has till date organized 24 CMEs on HvPI and trained around 4,800 participants under the CMEs in India alone. HvPI has also recently broadened its reach by adding 29 more centres under it taking the total number of centres to 236 covering the programme. HvPI is aimed at raising awareness of transfusion hazards and giving an early warning of new complications to improve safety of blood transfusion for patients.

NIB is an autonomous institution under the Union health ministry which ensures quality of biologicals and vaccines in the country available through domestic manufacturers or imports.

Awareness about the programme, its objectives and its non- punitive implications is also being generated through publications in reputed journals, magazines and haemovigilance newsletters and also by organizing CMEs on HvPI in different regions of the country.

NIB is also collaborating with National Health Mission (NHM) and will be acting as a resource institute for two states to begin with namely Odisha and Uttar Pradesh for implementation of training programme to strengthen blood services in the respective states.