Blood network

When indianblooddonors. com was nominated for the Manthan award, little did Khushroo and Fermin Poacha of Nagpur realize that their individual effort would be pitted against UNICEF’s or the National Helpline on HIV/AIDS. Therefore his receiving the silver award in the ‘e-health’ category for best e-content and creativity was creditable, notes a write up by Shernaz Daver of Nagpur. The award sponsored by eight organizations including the Poona based Centre for Advance Computing, American Indian Foundation and European Academy of Digital Media was presented to the Poachas at a function at the India International Centre, New Delhi on July 23, 2005.

One hundred nominations from 21 states of India were received for the awards. The jury comprised of 16 eminent experts from various walks of life who judged the sites for the best e-content practices in the eight categories prescribed in the context of the World Summit Award under the framework of United Nations World Summit on the Information Society. Their site has now been nominated for Asia Innovations Award 2005 to be held at Singapore and organized jointly by the Wall Street Journal, Asian Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones.

From left: Fermin and Khushroo Poacha receive award from Vinaysheel Oberoi

"Someone, somewhere, at this very moment is in urgent need of blood,” Khushroo commenced his speech at the awards function which ultimately won him a standing ovation. What makes this helpline so special is that it was created by the couple from their personal savings to come to the aid of patients who need blood in an emergency. Khushroo, an employee of the Indian Railways and Fermin, a cashier in the J. N. Tata Parsi Girls’ High School have neither a background in medicine nor information technology. Many economic hurdles and obstacles later this five-year-old website has more than 25,000 voluntary blood donors from 330 cities of India registered on its site. A donor can register online by filling up a simple form giving his name, address, contact number, blood group and the date when blood was last donated. The donors are ensured complete privacy and they can donate blood at the nearest blood bank in the city or one of their choice.

Their organized source of information gets about 25-30 requests for blood each day, mainly from cancer patients, those undergoing open heart surgeries and those suffering from thalassemia and sickle cell. The website proved particularly useful during the Gujarat earthquake. By December 2005 they hope to make the second version of the website operational with SMS facility to send alerts in crises. Until now they have been running this website at their own cost as a sense of commitment to society. But with its steady expansion and expenses they hope some corporates will come forward to lend a helping hand.

An active committee member of the Nagpur Parsi Gymkhana, Khushroo is in the forefront of most activities, organizing dinners, indoor sports tournaments, fund raising events. His latest laudable project is Parsinews sms wherein he sends out urgent funeral and uthamna news intimations to the nearly 200 Nagpur Parsi mobile users at his own cost, acknowledges Daver.