World Thalassemia Day is celebrated every year on May 8 in consideration of the patients suffering from thalassemia and their wards who never gave up despite all odds. An autosomal recessive blood disorder, thalassemia is a hereditary disease that can get transmitted from parents to children through genes. The disease makes the red blood cells (RBCs) weak and sometimes destroy them, hence affecting the formation of haemoglobin in the body and causing mild or severe anaemia.
According to medical experts, the person suffering from a severe form of thalassemia needs blood transfusion every month. Due to thalassemia, there is an iron overload in patient’s body, which needs to be chelated by oral medicines or injection.
Blood donation drives are important to save lives of millions of people fighting such diseases like thalassemia, anaemia and blood malignancies, among others. Blood donation is the easiest form of helping humanity and hardly takes any time.
However, amidst the COVID-19, the blood donation has been severely impacted due to lockdown restrictions imposed by the government. Even though coronavirus is not transmitted through blood, but recently, the National Blood Transfusion Council (NBTC) issued an order saying a person can’t donate blood “28 days post-vaccination after the last dose of COVID-19 vaccination”.
This is one of the reasons that has impacted the blood donation drives and causing a shortage of blood needed for transfusion in thalassemia patients.
For adequate blood transfusion, there should be sufficient amount of blood in the hospitals. However, COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult for thalassemia patients to get their blood transfusion done due to insufficient quantity of blood at hospitals.
COVID-19 pandemic has also hampered the production and supply of the iron-chelating medicines. It is worsening the condition of patients as they are unable to get rid of iron overload.
Thalassemia International Federation in a statement has said that thalassemia patients should be considered as a vulnerable group for the ongoing COVID-19 and should be given priority in the national vaccination programme.
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