World Blood Donor Day: No check on blood banks in the capital

After devolution, regulatory authority becomes toothless.

ISLAMABAD:

New blood banks set up in the federal capital are neither being registered nor monitored, after the devolution of the Ministry of Health under the 18th Amendment.

According to an official working with the Safe Blood Transfusion Programme working under the Capital Administration and Development Division, who requested anonymity, there is no regulator to register or monitor blood banks in the country. He was talking to The Express Tribune after the concluding ceremony of an event organsied at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) to mark the World Blood Donor Day observed every year on June 13. The day aims to pay tribute to voluntary blood donors who help save lives.

The official said that the Safe Blood Regulatory Authority has not been monitoring blood banks in the country. “Many blood banks are run by unprofessional people who transfuse blood without screening it, nor do they take precautionary measures while drawing blood from donors. Due to this, people contract infectious diseases.” The majority of public hospitals do not have blood in stock as they entirely depend on voluntary blood donations. People who do not have a donor are forced to visit substandard blood banks, he added.



Safe Blood Transfusion Programme Project Director, Prof. Hasan Abbas Zaheer said blood transfusion services have traditionally been accorded low priority in the healthcare sector like in other developing countries. “The current fragmented blood transfusion system in the country lacks a reliable and healthy donor base and a registry of voluntary regular donors,” he said.

“To introduce uniformity and standardisation in the quality of blood and blood products supplied and optimisation of scarce financial and human resources, a coordinated approach for blood supply system needs to be introduced in Pakistan,” he stated. A haemovigilance programme will  be introduced in Pakistan to gather data on safe blood transfusion practices in the country, he added.

On the occasion, Prof. Zaheer announced that work on a new state-of-the-art regional blood transfusion centre in Pims will begin in the near future. “The success of this immensely important blood safety project is dependent on the creation of a pool of healthy, voluntary blood donors who donate blood on a regular basis without any reward. If 2-3% of the population become a part of this pool, we will be able to achieve the target of 100% voluntary blood donation,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2013.