Colleagues

I am the medical director of the blood banks of 3-hospital system, Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, in Northeastern Illinois. My major interest (other than the day job) is helping to expand immunohematologic testing in India. Few blood banks there detect and identify antibodies. Pre-transfusion testing generally consists of an ABO and RH, and then Coombs' crossmatches. This works fine for many antibodies, but the limitations are obvious. And these limitations become more significant as the medical system becomes increasingly complex, as it is doing by leaps and bounds. So many Indian blood bankers have identified implementation of immunohematologic technology as a priority.

Some Indian colleagues and I have organized several wet workshops in India. The first was a 3-day pre-conference workshop at the Indian Society for Blood Transfusion and Immunohematology (ISBTI) meeting in Ahmedabad in November, '06 with my colleague and friend Sue Johnson from the Blood Center of Wisconsin. Then Marilynn Moulds and I gave a 5-day wet workshop in January at the Jeevan Blood Center in Chennai. These activities were largely self-funded, with a little help from the "Good Works" fund of my hospital's medical staff. Also ImmucorGamma was very generous with reagents and Cardinal Health supplied a lot of equipment and materials.

This year we are going back to the ISBTI meeting in November and to Chennai in January. We have some help from my Rotary club and again from ImmucorGamma. But we could use more help!

In particular we could use old serofuges that are in good working order, preferably Clay Adams serofuge II's. If you have one gathering dust on a high shelf of the storage room please email me. <jperkins@enh.org>

We could also use dry heat incubators.

Reagents are prohibitively expensive for many of these laboratories, so we are working with several to create their own screening and panel cells. But the typing sera needed to get going are also very expensive. Does anyone have units of disease-tested, antibody-containing plasma with single, conventional specificities we could use for this purpose? Again, send me an email.

Gratefully yours,

Jim Perkins

I'm going all over India for just over 2 weeks starting next Friday to do a training programme, really concentrating on antibody screening and identification. It will be a mixture of wet and dry; we should be be using their samples - hopefully we'll be able to solve a few of their 'real' cases. This has been organised by the Indian branch of the company I work for, which is a major manufacturer of blood grouping reagents in Switzerland (I don't think I'm allowed to mention the name - or am I?) So clearly this is a mixture of pure education and marketing. Is your trip purely educational?

Thanks for your reply Galvania;

I assume you'll meet my colleague and friend, Madhu Chandnani in India. If you're interested, please email me directly at jperkins@enh.org. i'd love to hear about your trip.

Jim

Dear Jim

The world really is small. Isn't it amazing that we live in 2 different continents and we both know someone else in a third. Yes, I do know Madhu - very well, in fact. She is also a colleague and a very good friend. She will be accompanying me on part of the trip. You know, we work for the same company. I will definitely be in touch with you when I come back - towards the end of July. Meanwhile I'll let her know that we've been in contact. That will suprise her! I have to mail her tomorrow

Anna