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Need for standardization of technical manpower norms for Indian blood
centres
Article in Transfusion Clinique et Biologique · September 2023
DOI: 10.1016/j.tracli.2023.09.002
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Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (Tata Memorial Centre), Punjab Alchemist Hospital
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Swami Rama Himalayan University
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Letter to the Editor
Need for standardization of technical manpower norms for Indian blood
centres
Naveen Bansal a,⇑, Gulshan Paul Saluja b, Manish Raturi c
a
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Punjab, India
b
Department of Transfusion Medicine, Alchemist Hospital, Panchkula, Haryana, India
c
Department of Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion, Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences, Swami Rama Himalayan University, Jolly Grant, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
Dear Sir, Table 1
It is crucial to ensure adequate staffing in blood centres to Manpower in blood bank with annual collection upto 5000 blood units.
maintain blood safety and good manufacturing practices. Inade-
Cadre NBTC Actual Manpower
quate staffing and lack of equipment is a common problem in Minimum Average Deficit in
blood banks in resource constraint settings i.e. low and middle Requirement workforce [5] percentage
income countries [1]. Despite the importance of manpower in [2]
quality assurance for blood transfusion services, there have been Medical Officer 4 1.33 66.8%
few international studies assessing the workload of blood centre Lab Technician 12 3.06 74.5%
staff to determine an ideal staff requirement [2]. Few computer- including
Technical
based simulation models have been suggested to determine staff Supervisor
requirements for blood donation drives [3,4]. National Blood Nursing Staff 3 1.56 48%
Transfusion Council (NBTC) of India published manpower norms Medical Social 3 0.98 67.3%
for blood centres in 2018 [2]. The manpower has been defined Worker
based upon the annual blood collection of blood centres. However, NBTC- National Blood Transfusion Council, Government of India.
according to a comprehensive assessment report of blood centres
by NBTC, Director General of Health Services (DGHS), Government The tool calculates the data based upon the parameters: manpower
of India in collaboration with the US Centre for Disease Control and allocated to perform particular task; the total duty hours of the
Prevention [5], the average manpower in the blood centres with an staff; the total number of times an activity needs to be repeated
annual collection of up to 5,000 units, with a component separa- each day. Using this software, Rout et al. concluded that their blood
tion and apheresis facility, falls far below the minimum manpower centre was understaffed and that there was high workload pres-
recommended by NBTC [Table 1]. sure on the existing staff [11]. To ensure that blood safety is main-
In India, blood centre norms are defined by the Drugs and Cos- tained, regulatory authorities need to define and implement
metics Act 1940 with Rules 1945 and its later amendments and minimum manpower requirement criteria for licensing condition
according to this Act, the manpower criteria will be as defined in in blood centres. The staffing can be calculated by incorporating
the DGHS Technical Manual [6]. However, even the latest edition the WHO tool along with the approximate annual blood collection
of the DGHS technical manual published in 2023 doesn’t mention at a blood centre. This will help to prevent errors and ensure adher-
any staffing criteria for blood centres [7]. This lack of clear guide- ence to follow the standard operating procedures. Total quality
lines is resulting in insufficient manpower in blood centres as is management in blood transfusion services can only be achieved
evident from the 2016 assessment report of blood centres in India with adequate manpower in place.
[5]. Inadequate manpower increases the workload on the already
burdened staff, leading to long working hours, that results in fati-
Ethical approval
gue and loss of attention [8]. These factors can further cause errors
and jeopardize blood safety. According to a study conducted by
The study was conducted in accordance with the ethical stan-
Sidhu et al., pre-transfusion testing errors have been linked to
dards of the institute and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and
increased workload on staff [9]. World Health Organization
its later amendments.
(WHO) has a software application named ‘‘Workflow Indicators
of Staffing Needs”, to calculate the workload on existing staff and
to calculate the actual staff requirement for a health facility [10]. Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
⇑ Corresponding author. cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
E-mail address:
[email protected] (N. Bansal). to influence the work reported in this paper.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tracli.2023.09.002
1246-7820/Ó 2023 Société française de transfusion sanguine (SFTS) Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: N. Bansal, G. Paul Saluja and M. Raturi, Need for standardization of technical manpower norms for Indian blood centres, Transfu-
sion clinique et biologique, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tracli.2023.09.002
N. Bansal, G. Paul Saluja and M. Raturi Transfusion clinique et biologique xxx (xxxx) xxx
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