Meena (name changed) is a 13-year-old child, who strived hard to buy syringes, gloves, medicines, for her mother suffering from dengue. What added insult to her injury; is the rate of Platelets kits. SDP (Single Donor Platelet) Kit price killed her future, her aspirations, and her mother. Meena had no one else other than her mother. Her mother suffered from severe dengue and died with multi-organ failure on 17 November. When her mother was slowly dying on ICU bed, Meena was rushing to Rajpura to buy an SDP kit. All she had was Rs 21000 left in her wallet, and she managed to buy the same in Rs 15000 that too without a bill, whereas the MRP of the SDP kit starts from Rs 7700.
Some people helped her and donated SDP kits too. However, on 17th November the mother died. Meena is not alone in this journey of pain. Numerous people are ending up in emergencies with dengue these days. Punjab that has data of 600 dengue patients per day, now started witnessing a declining trend to 150 dengue patients per day, but the sting of SDP kits’ price is still the same.
Punjab Health Secretary Vikas Garg told The Daily Guardian that they are trying to tackle this menace of black marketeers. They are going to release tender of apheresis platelets Machines for its 31 Blood banks. Punjab has 40 Blood Banks, 9 already had Apheresis machines. Punjab would release the tender and would purchase the machines within this month only. Moreover, every Government Hospital would have controlled rate SDP kits within the Hospital so no patient shall suffer the burn of high price, said Garg.
Garg further suggested that all Chandigarh-based Government hospitals shall also mandate to have these machines in their blood banks so that no patient shall have to run for kits in the market. The Daily Guardian spoke to Dr. Suman DHS Chandigarh on this, She said, “We are providing platelets to everyone. We are providing free of cost platelets to those who can not afford SDP kits once they approach us.”