Bengaluru: An accident victim died after his family failed to arrange blood, as most of the private blood banks refused to accept demonetised notes in Bengaluru.
Raju(30) from Nelamangala met with an accident on Tuesday afternoon and was shifted to Victoria Hospital at 11:30 pm on Tuesday by which time he had lost 60 per cent blood. His family members scurried around the city trying to arrange for blood transfusion with invalid notes of Rs 500 in hand.
Raju’s wife Soumya told Indian Express, “We needed Rs 2,600 for procuring four units of plasma and two units of red blood cells. When we reached M S Ramaiah, they insisted on Rs 100 notes. My brother-in-law’s friend Lakshminarasimahiah even offered to deposit his driver’s licence and mobile phone with the blood bank. The DL is still with Ramaiah Hospital. But they did not budge and gave us blood only after three hours. For two days, we roamed about blood banks in Vasanthnagar and one near Uma Talkies.”
Dr Balaji Pai, special officer, Emergency and Trauma Care Centre, Victoria Hospital, said, “He was given 14 units of blood components from Victoria. Our stock was exhausted and we couldn’t give him anymore, which is why we sent a request to other blood banks. Each unit has 300ml of blood.”
The family members of the victim struggled to travel to other blood banks as they had no enough change. The reached the blood bank at MS Ramaiah Hospital at 9:45 am on Wednesday to get fresh frozen plazma and packed red blood cells. However, it was a three-hour wait before they could finally get it. The post-mortem was done on Friday.
The demonetisation scheme against black money by the central government has affected the common people. Three people have died while waiting in the long queue to exchange the banned notes so far.