New Delhi, July 31 (IANS) The government will set up blood banks in the four metros as Centres of Excellence in Transfusion Medicine at a cost of Rs.4.68 billion, it was announced here Thursday.
To be set up in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, the centres “will ensure 24 hour availability of blood and will be designed to meet the highest standards of safety”, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters.

He was speaking after a meeting of the cabinet committee on economic affairs (CCEA) presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Each centre will collect more than 100,000 units of blood annually. These will be processed into three blood components, resulting in the generation of more than 300,000 units, Chidambaram said.

“The centres will handle any type of natural or manmade disaster or outbreaks like dengue, which often require large volumes of blood transfusions at short notice,” he added.

“Blood will only be collected from voluntary donors through state-of-art blood mobiles, qualitatively improving the system of collection,” the minister said.

“These centres would benefit in strengthening blood transfusion services in the country for access to safe and quality blood and blood products in metro cities and would be comparable to international standards,” Chidambaram maintained.