Bloody bungling

British man of letters and celebrated poet John Milton (1608-1674) has been quoted as saying: A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit. His thought, expressed in this unique way, connecting book and blood may prompt one to ponder over the need for bestowing more care and attention to both. While the blind poet’s adulation for books, particularly good books, takes us to the fascinating world of literature, knowing and learning about the role blood plays in the currently expanding field of medical diagnostics can be and should be not only more fascinating but also highly rewarding. We hear seasoned physicians, specialising in treating their diabetic patients, that the set of figures revealing blood sugar recorded at random, after 12-hour fasting and postprandial is the Gold Standard for precise diagnosis of the stage of disorder.

Physicians following the time-tested practice of a) hearing the patient’s version of the health-related problem(s), b) feeling the pulse rate, c) recording the temperature, d) checking the heart-beat and e) occasionally observing systolic and diastolic heart conditions, apart from obtaining a word or two from the patient about food consumed as well as bowel movements have yielded place to a genre of medical practitioners who seek report from the pathology laboratory, with result of blood tests featured conspicuously.

While a mere drop of blood drawn by a prick a la mosquito bite sent for testing in the pathology laboratory tells a bit to the doctor about the state of his or her patient’s health, a little more blood, say a spoonful or two, tells a lot more. While people at large, given their near-zero knowledge about the intimate connect between pathology and physiology of the human body, grudgingly go through the tests, it is unfair to insist on treatment without test, and much worse, resorting to self-diagnosis and self-medication. The dismal child nutrition scenario and in the country being more talked about than acted upon to address the sufferings on a mass scale, has unarguably pushed the more serious blood-related issues such as anaemia, leukaemia, septicaemia and virally infected blood to the region of inadequate attention.

In the foregoing backdrop of the nation’s ill-health-bugged masses, particularly blood-centric illnesses, a just-published report in a section of the press that 28 lakh units of blood and its components were discarded by blood banks across India holds mirror to bloody bungling as it were by those in the all-important health sector, Karnataka keeping company with Maharashtra,  Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu as the worst offenders. Donors of blood are thus denied a sense of noble fulfilment in their act of life-saving benevolence.