Implementation of Indian National plasma policy at blood bank of a tertiary care hospital: A step towards strengthening of blood transfusion services.

Introduction: The World Health Organization has advocated that every country should make its own policy for ensuring safe and adequate supply of plasma derived medicinal products through mobilization and usage of locally collected plasma. The National Plasma Policy (NPP) of India was published in 2014 with a dual objective to achieve self sufficiency in the production of plasma derived medicinal products and at the same time to augment the component preparation facilities in India and overall upliftment of blood transfusion services in the country. Thus the present study was done to access the impact of implementation of NPP in our blood bank on the blood transfusion services in our hospital.

Materials And Methods: The present study was a retrospective observational study conducted in the department of transfusion medicine of a tertiary care hospital in India involving analysis of data from 1st January 2019 till 31st December 2022. For the purpose of data analysis the time period was divided into 2 periods: (i) Pre-NPP implementation period from 1st January 2019 till 31st December 2020; (ii) Post-NPP period from 1st January 2021 till 31st December 2022. The following parameters were compared for the two periods: (i) component preparation rate; (ii) percentage of component therapy; (iii) total number of FFP transferred to plasma fractionation centers; (iv) total amount of exchange amount generated in lieu of transferred FFP to plasma fractionation centers.

Results: The component preparation rate after NPP implementation was significantly higher as compared to the pre NPP implementation period (93.81% vs 56.70%; p = 0.007). The percentage of component therapy in the patients was also significantly higher as compared to the pre-NPP implementation period (97.9% vs 73.6%; p = 0.005). The total amount of exchange amount generation in Indian rupee (INR) after NPP implementation was INR 1419462 (15835€) while it was INR 636898 (7105€) in the pre NPP implementation period. This amount was utilized for procurement of various blood bank equipment, in addition 2 lab technicians were also hired for the blood bank.

Conclusions: The implementation of NPP resulted in upliftment of blood transfusion services in our hospital. Other low and middle income countries can benefit from implementation of similar plasma policy in their countries.