Minister assures provision of healthy blood to patients

More regional blood banks will be set up in other districts

LAHORE: Punjab Minister for Specialised Healthcare and Medical Education Khwaja Salman Rafique has said that provision of healthy blood is the basic right of every patient and keeping in view the importance of this fact a system is being evolved to provide screened and healthy blood to the patients admitted in the private hospitals from the public sector blood banks.

He expressed these views while presiding over a meeting of Punjab Blood Transfusion Authority (PBTA) in Lahore on Thursday.

He said that this system would not only be helpful to provide healthy blood to the patients but it would also discourage the business of sub-standard and inadequate blood banks.

He added that instead of the patient, the private hospital would be responsible to ensure provision of blood for which these hospitals could ink an agreement with the public sector blood banks. For the purpose, a committee was being constituted to finalise the procedure, he said.

Salman Rafique pointed out that Punjab government had made legislation on Punjab Blood Transfusion Act 2016 for establishing an efficient system to ensure provision of screened and healthy blood to the patients for which PBTA had also been established.

Salman Rafique said that all the blood banks would be interlinked through a software which had been prepared by Punjab Information Technology Board. He said that this system would generate a central database of blood collected from the donors.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2018.