Guest Editor

Sangeeth Kini,

Vice President Hemogenomics

At the outset, it is my great privilege to be the Guest Editor of this issue of the leading healthcare magazine – IndiaMedToday. I am even happier that this issue is themed around Transfusion Medicine Specialty.

Transfusion medicine has evolved as a very crucial branch of modern medicine. The safe and efficient transfusion of blood, blood components and stem cells plays a very important role in patient care. Ms Neelam Kachhap, Editor of IndiaMedToday and her team have passionately curated this issue to give the readers the recent updates in the area of transfusion medicine.

Transfusion medicine is a superspecialised branch of medicine and the MD course in transfusion medicine is offered by about 35 medical colleges in India. There are over 3200 licensed blood banks in our country and more than 12 million units of blood are being collected and issued every year. Apart from blood and blood components, the advanced transfusion centres also collect and infuse stem cells from the bone marrow.

The role of safe and efficient blood transfusion is critical to sustaining the life of lakhs of patient groups such as thalassemics, patients with sickle cell anaemia, leukaemia patients etc who are dependent on frequent blood transfusions. Transfusion medicine also plays a very critical role in various complex surgeries and organ transplant surgeries including ABO-incompatible organ transplants as well as stem cell and bone marrow transplant procedures. Needless to say, the critical role that blood transfusion plays in emergency conditions!

The advent of technologies such as nucleic acid testing, pathogen inactivation, red cell genotyping, HLA Cross-matching, Apheresis, etc has enabled efficient collection, screening, storage and transfusion of the most compatible blood products to the patients with almost nil adverse effects.

Despite all the progress made in this branch of medicine, there are certain areas of grave concern. While I sit down to pen this Guest Editorial, the recent news that ‘four Thalassemic children tested positive for HIV in Nagpur allegedly after blood transfusion and out of them one child died’ looms large in my mind. Right to Protection of Life is a Fundamental Right as enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. Courts have given this fundamental right a very broad interpretation and application that includes the Right to Health, Right to Live with Dignity, Right to Medical Care, etc. It is a fundamental duty of the state and the healthcare providers to uphold this right of the citizens. Transfusion transmitted infections are medical mishaps that are avoidable through the adoption of processes and technologies that are easily available today. However, thousands of innocent patients continue to be infected with HIV or Hepatitis B and C every year through blood transfusion. In this context, it is the need of the day that experts and policymakers bring about necessary guidelines towards improved transfusion practices, and stricter hemo-vigilance to uphold the confidence in the blood transfusion system.

I wish all the best to IndiamedToday and its editor Neelam Kachhap in their endeavour to present to the readers high-quality content in the area of healthcare month after month.