Every dengue season, Assam’s hospitals discover the same hard limit of medicine: platelets cannot be stockpiled. They live for five days outside the body. No freezer helps. The only storage system for platelets is a pool of living humans who agree in advance.
Who platelets save
Dengue patients whose counts crash. Leukemia and cancer patients whose chemotherapy wipes platelets out. Newborns with neonatal problems. Surgery patients who bleed. For all of them, a platelet transfusion is the difference between a bruise and a brain bleed.
Who can be a platelet donor
- 18-65, 50 kg+, the standard eligibility gates
- A good vein in the arm (apheresis needs it)
- No aspirin in the last 48-72 hours (aspirin disables platelets — paracetamol is fine)
- A pre-donation platelet count check at the centre
Two routes: apheresis (machine takes just your platelets, returns the rest — 60-90 minutes, repeatable every 15 days at equipped centres like medical colleges) or whole blood (your unit is separated into components, platelets included).
The Assam reality
Guwahati’s medical colleges run apheresis; district banks mostly separate from whole blood. Dengue months (post-monsoon) can triple demand in days. A donor list built in March saves Guwahati in October.
Be on the list
Register, keep notifications on, and mark yourself reachable — when a platelet request matches your area, you get the alert and you know exactly what it means. Five days of shelf life, one hour of your afternoon.