Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Tuesday exhorted the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) to keep sufficient blood stock for transfusion by promoting voluntary blood donation and providing facilities of pick up and drop to donors.
The minister also asked the IRCS to send mobile blood collection vans to the premises of regular blood donors to facilitate them to come forward for donation at this point of time.
Vardhan urged the IRCS to contact recovered COVID-19 patients and ask them to come forward for blood donation from which convalescent plasma can be used for transfusion to the coronavirus-affected patients for their early recovery.
"The IRCS may like to take up this at the earliest so that the blood collected from the recovered patients can be used for transfusion for the benefit of coronavirus infected patients," he said.
Interacting with IRCS members from across India through a video conference, Vardhan said that earlier the COVID-19 samples were sent to US for testing which took a lot of time for results, but now India has developed around 200 labs for testing samples.
"Apart from this India imposed lockdown at the right time to stop the spread of the dreaded virus. Right now India has ample number of COVID-19 dedicated hospitals, PPEs, N95 masks, ventilators and medicines. We are at the better footing as compared to rest of the world," he said.
The Union minister has also written to state health ministers to promote voluntary blood donation.
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The minister gave details of efforts made by the government to deal with COVID-19. Representatives of Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) from Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Telangana, Delhi and Karnataka apprised the minister about the activities undertaken by their respective branches.
"I may like to state that India was the first country in the world to respond to COVID-19 crisis without wasting any time. It was India which responded proactively to China's first disclosure about coronavirus to the world. On the very next day India initiated steps to monitor the situation and first Joint Monitoring Group meeting was held," he said.
Vardhan said that India was the front runner in leading the onslaught against the COVID-19 pandemic and it took all the precautionary measures like screening at airports, ports, land borders with neighbouring countries, surveillance and contact tracing.
He further stated that all international flights were instructed not to land at all airports in India with effect from early morning March 23.
"I really value Indian Red Cross fraternity having given a great contribution in our fight against COVID-19. In fact the contribution is appreciable for providing equipments, sanitizers, food, PPE kits and N95 masks etc. for hospitals," Union Health Minister said.