Narayana Health - SRCC Children’s Hospital launches a dedicated blood bank for pediatric needs

• Only dedicated blood bank for pediatric needs
• Capacity of 400 liters and will scale up further to 900 liters
• Gamma rays irradiation facility to prevent complications while blood transfusion
• Launched blood donation camp between 11th – 15th June on the sidelines of World Blood Donor Day

Narayana Health - SRCC Children’s Hospital one of the largest multi-speciality pediatric healthcare hospital in Mumbai, today launched a Blood Bank at the hospital. The blood bank will have storage capacity of 400 liters of blood and it can be scaled upto 900 liters going forward. The state-of-the-art blood bank is spread over 2000 sq ft of space, largest in any pediatric hospitals in the city. The blood bank will also have a unique technology which can eradicate any complexities in blood through ‘Gamma Rays Irradiation’ technique, which will help to prevent any complexities during transfusion of blood in children.

Dr Zarin Bharucha, Chairperson, Blood Bank Federation of Bombay Blood Bank and representative of WHO, at the inauguration of the blood bank said, “We congratulate NH- SRCC Children’s Hospital for such a novel concept. Blood is like a lifeline to any human being and there is scarcity of blood at crucial times. Mumbai needs over 12 lakh units of blood but currently we get only 8 lakh units of blood. Regular blood donors are also very less in number. Would like to also urge people to come forward and give gift of giving life to the needy one’s by donating blood.”

The hospital has also launched blood donation camp between 11th to 15th June 2018 on the eve of World Blood Donor Day, which will be conducted world over on 14th June 2018.

Dr Purna Kurkure, Medical Director, Narayana Health SRCC Children’s Hospital said, “Generally, a blood bank and blood donation camps are conducted for adults only and no one thinks about need of blood for a child’s critical health conditions. This blood bank will provide blood to children from our hospital as well as any child in Mumbai who needs emergency blood. We dedicate the blood bank to the children of Mumbai city.”

Transfusion-Associated-Graft-Versus-Host-Disease (TA-GvHD) is a rare but usually fatal complication of blood transfusion and occurs when lymphocytes in the donor’s blood engraft in a susceptible recipient proliferates and damage organs. Lymphocytes are one of several types of white blood cells in a person’s immune system.

Dr Kalpana Velaskar, Head of department, Transfusion Medicine, said, “To prevent TA-GvHD, especially in children undergoing blood transfusion, the blood bank is equipped with Gamma Ray irradiation technology”.

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SRCC Children’s Hospital, managed by Narayana Health, is a multi-speciality hospital exclusively for children. Of the 207 beds currently operational, 87 have been allocated for Multispecialty Critical Care covering new-borns to adolescents.

It has taken critical care to a higher level with the concept of Level IV care where a qualified team of Paediatric Intensivists will be able to provide Emergency Life Support (ELS) for children with failure of their vital organs including heart, lungs and kidneys. Also available are a team of specialists in Cardiac sciences, Neurosciences, Hematology- Oncology, infectious diseases, Endocrinology, Orthopaedics, ENT, Gastroenterology, diagnostics services and nephrology amongst others.

About Narayana Health:

With all superspeciality tertiary care facilities that the medical world offers, Narayana Health is a one-stop healthcare destination for all. Founded by Dr. Devi Shetty and headquartered in Bengaluru, Narayana Health group is the second largest health care provider in the country in terms of operational bed count. The first facility was established with approximately 225 operational beds in 2000 at NH Health City in Bengaluru.  The Company today, runs a chain of multispecialty, tertiary and primary healthcare facilities across India with a network of 24 hospitals and 7 heart centres and a single hospital overseas at Cayman Islands with over 6,200 operational beds across all its centres and potential to reach a capacity of around 7,300 beds.

About Society for Rehabilitation of Crippled Children (SRCC): SRCC registered under the Societies Act , 1860  and the Maharashtra Public Trust Act 1950. It was established in 1948 to start Children’s Orthopaedic Hospital to assist children affected by polio. So far, SRCC has provided healthcare benefits to 100,000 children. It aims are to organise hospitals and clinics for diagnosis, care and treatment of disabled and other children needing any other medical treatment. To create and educate public opinion on the problem of such afflicted children. Its first effort was to establish the Children’s Orthopaedic Hospital to look after children afflicted by poliomyelitis. As this crippling disease was gradually eliminated, the society started offering its services to children. In 2009 a separate CENTRE FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT to offer a variety of therapies on out-patient basis, namely physiotherapy, occupation therapy, speech therapy, education therapy and psychotherapy. Education therapy department assists children to do a variety of board examinations.