With the Medical College Hospital in Kolkata establishing a rare blood group registry, tracing persons with unusual blood groups may become easier. The registry, which is being run by the ICMR, will feature both local and national entries, allowing donors to be found with the click of a mouse.

Prasun Bhattacharya, head of immunohematology and transfusion medicine at MCHK said “The attempt is to set up a scientifically designed network for rare blood groups. The registry is expected to have information from across the nation. We have started initiating the ground work with help from ICMR.” 

According to sources, this is similar to the organ donation network. Mostly, blood banks have units of blood groups like A, B and O positives. AB negative and positive and B negative units were difficult to get, but the most difficult was tracing the extremely rare Bombay blood group. If any patient required blood of a rare group in one part of the state and a donor was available the other part, blood could be collected using local network and sent to the patient. (ET Heahthworld, TNN, April 13, 2022,)