Even as Gujarat prides itself in being number one state in the country as far as blood donation is concerned, those working in the field say that men outnumber women as blood donors.
However, blood bank officials say that it is anaemia and not lack of willingness that has led to this trend.
Take the case of the Ahmedabad Red Cross Society. It collected blood from 90,000 people in the year 2011-12. Of this, a mere 6% of donors (5,400) were women.
Mahesh Trivedi, honorary secretary of the Indian Red Cross Society said that low participation of women in donating blood is because most of them are anaemic.
“In our country, women hardly take care of their health and nutrition requirement, which leads to anaemia. The other reasons include heavy blood loss during menstruation among others. An anaemic person cannot donate blood which is why the number of women donating blood is so low,” said Trivedi.
He said that a WHO report showed that in several not-so-prosperous countries like Zimbabwe, Estonia, Azerbaijan and others, over 50% of blood donors were women.
Experts also said that women form the majority of those who figure in the defer ratio (the number of people who are prevented from being blood donors). For example, if the defer ratio for 100 blood donors is 35%, it means that of the 100, 35 were not allowed to give blood for some or the other reason.
“Of the 500 to 600 people who are rejected every month, at least 400 happen to be women. Mostly, the reason for rejection is that they are anaemic,” said Dr Vishwas Amin, executive director of Ahmedabad Red Cross Society.
Low participation of women because of anaemia is a fact seconded by Rajnish Bakshi, operations, Prathma project.
“We collect around 54,000 units of blood every year. Our defer ratio is around 35% and majority of those rejected happen to be women,” said Bakshi.
Chaitanya Sanghvi, a professor at LD Engineering college who has also helped organise several blood donation camps, agrees that most of our women happen to be anaemic.
“I remember a camp where 100 female students came forward to donate blood, but just five had the required haemoglobin level to donate blood,” said Sanghvi.
