In April 2017, a leading
newspaper in India reported “2.8 million units of precious blood and its
components discarded by blood banks” while another reported the shortage of 3
million units of blood and its components every year. While the reports above
highlight the horrifying statistics of only one developing country, the story
isn’t different for the rest of the world. The current global blood shortage
is of approximately 40 million units every year.
Recent studies have
shown that the leading reasons attributed to the wastage of blood components in
hospitals in developing countries have been the bacterial or viral
contamination, expiry due to short shelf life of plasma, inability of hospitals
to ‘re-use’ the blood components, expensive blood separator
machines etc.. When a person receives blood transfusion, she/he receives a
blood component that her/his blood is missing. In most cases, the rest of the
blood components are disposed off.
In 2018, OP Beniwal, a
technical supervisor at a blood bank collaborated with Pyrotech (a leading
tech-manufacturer in India) to work on his idea of an automated blood separator
that not only separates various components of blood i.e. WBCs, Platelets,
Plasma and RBCs but also generates leukoseparated RBCs (blood components used
for blood transfusions without WBCs). The machine ensures that the donor blood
can be used thrice and prevents viral or bacterial infection to the
recipient.
So, how does this work?
Once a donor donates his
blood, the blood is passed through a centrifugal machine that separates the
blood components based on density. The blood then gets collected into blood
bags, the automated blood separator machine then applies pressure on the blood
bag ensuring that the blood components remain separated. The machine uses
sensors to assess the location of various blood components in the blood bag.
The RBCs remain at the bottom, followed by Platelets and Plasma.
Upon diagnosis, the
patient is given the component of the blood he/she requires. For example : A
child suffering from Anemia will be given RBCs, while a child suffering from
side effects of cancer treatment such as bleeding would be given plasma and
platelets. Thus, the same donor blood can be used multiple times on different
patients based on his/her requirements. Each time the sensor senses a mixture
of blood components, the process of separation gets restarted.
Furthermore, the machine
uses the above mentioned sensors to separate WBCs from the blood at the first
step of the process, thereby, reducing the chances of any viral or bacterial
infection during transfusion.
What’s the future?
The cost and
‘manual-aspect’ of previously existing blood-separator machines made it
impossible for hospitals in developing countries to use them. The lack of
automation, time, training and processes required for separation defeat the
purpose of reducing wastage and increase the risks of possible errors and
infections. Furthermore, the manual blood separator machines developed so far
cannot perform the function of leukoreduction.
The makers of automated
blood separator machine have now tied up with Red Cross and governments of
developing countries and are now manufacturing the machine at half the cost of
a manual machine.
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