Shas­tri Boodan

The blood bank at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) is ex­pect­ed to ex­tend its open­ing hours to 8 pm as part of ef­forts to en­cour­age more peo­ple to do­nate blood and meet de­mand for emer­gency med­ical care.

North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man Dr Tim Gopeesingh an­nounced the plan on Sat­ur­day dur­ing a blood dri­ve host­ed by the Ob­stet­rics and Gy­nae­co­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go at the EWM­SC.

Gopeesingh said arrange­ments to ex­tend the hours were be­ing fi­nalised.

Reg­is­tered nurse Hadiya Adams and her team are work­ing on in­tro­duc­ing a shift sys­tem.

“We’re look­ing to ex­tend the hours for col­lec­tion up to 8 pm, and nurse Adams is work­ing with her team to ef­fect that,” he said.

The ini­tia­tive is be­ing pur­sued in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Dr Shiv­ir Moo­sai, head of the Na­tion­al Blood Trans­fu­sion Ser­vice, as the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties work to im­prove blood col­lec­tion ser­vices.

The EWM­SC blood bank cur­rent­ly col­lects about 600 to 700 units of blood each month, Gopeesingh said.

Do­nat­ed blood un­der­goes screen­ing for HIV, syphilis, he­pati­tis B, he­pati­tis C and Cha­gas dis­ease to help en­sure the safe­ty of the blood sup­ply.

The NCRHA is al­so work­ing to es­tab­lish a sys­tem to in­form donors when their screen­ing re­sults are nor­mal, so they can keep the in­for­ma­tion for ref­er­ence.

Gopeesingh said blood col­lect­ed at the fa­cil­i­ty is processed in­to com­po­nents, in­clud­ing cry­o­pre­cip­i­tate, fresh frozen plas­ma and packed red blood cells.

These prod­ucts sup­port trans­fu­sions and ma­jor sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures.

He com­mend­ed nurs­es and oth­er health­care work­ers across the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties for their work col­lect­ing and pro­cess­ing blood to meet pa­tients’ needs.

The na­tion­al blood bank­ing ser­vice costs the State about $25 mil­lion for staffing, test­ing and oth­er re­lat­ed ex­pens­es, he es­ti­mat­ed.

He de­scribed the ex­pen­di­ture as mon­ey well spent, giv­en the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing a re­li­able blood sup­ply.

Gopeesingh said the NCRHA would con­tin­ue to pro­vide the blood bank with the fa­cil­i­ties and re­sources need­ed to op­er­ate.

The pro­posed lat­er clos­ing time is ex­pect­ed to give prospec­tive donors who can­not vis­it dur­ing cur­rent open­ing hours more flex­i­bil­i­ty.

The change is an­tic­i­pat­ed to take ef­fect this year, once the nec­es­sary arrange­ments are fi­nalised.