Upper Class Blood from Rotary Club Blood bank in Delhi

[Guest guest]

Comments? Is there any validation to this story?

M.

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(IPS article)

HEALTH-INDIA: Now Available: 'Upper Class' Blood By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun. 24 (IPS) - India's notorious social distinctions based on

caste and class have spilled into the blood donation sector that even

reputable blood banks now advertise blood that is guaranteed not to come

from the dregs of society.

A pamphlet distributed by the Rotary Blood Bank run in the national capital

by Rotary International describes the pathetic situation of blood banking

in India. It is marked by acute shortages, lack of volunteer donors, an

unimplemented six-year-old Supreme Court ban on professional donors and,

worst of all, unscientific social prejudices against certain classes of

donors.

Says the pamphlet: ''We understand that a large number of replacement

donors are paid donors. We want to discontinue clandestine sale of blood.

It is well known that several semi-nourished people, rickshaw pullers, drug

addicts and other people short of money for smack, donate blood.''

The Rotary International facility was inaugurated in March by Lal Krishna

Advani, home minister in the right-wing, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led

central government.

The 'better' blood offered by Rotary comes at 18 dollars a unit, which is

twice that charged by the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) that runs the

capital's biggest blood banking facility and accounts for up to 45,000

units of transfusable blood annually.

Voluntary groups involved with the blood banking sector say that in spite

of the high prices and socially discriminatory attitude, the Rotary

facility has been accorded the status of a Regional Transfusion Centre

(RTC) and granted funds worth more than a million dollars from government

sources.

Questioned about the about Rotary's maverick attitude, the Delhi State

Blood Transfusion Council has promised action. ''We have told Rotary that

they should coordinate with other regional blood centres and also reduce

their prices. If they do not conform we can withdraw their RTC status,''

said Dr. Bharat Singh, member secretary of the Council.

But rights organisations think that the RTC status accorded so far to the

IRCS Blood Bank and to government facilities, should never have been given

to an openly elitist organisation like the Rotary International in the

first place.

''The Rotary Blood Bank is setting a precedent for the commercialisation of

blood banking in a country where the official policy is that blood should

not be traded in,'' said Purushottaman Mulloli, convenor of the Join Action

Council (JAC), an umbrella organisation for rights groups that focuses on

issues related to public health and HIV/AIDS.

Indeed, it was such a view that was supposed to have guided the Supreme

Court into passing an order five years ago banning professional donors from

selling their blood.

Buying blood from professional donors goes back to colonial times and was

institutionalised during the Second World War when large quantities of

transfusable blood was required and few Indians were willing to donate what

they considered to be a precious fluid.

The Supreme Court ban did not appreciably change things and several

voluntary organisations have brought out detailed reports showing that the

bulk of blood available for transfusion continues to come from professional

donors with the trade going underground and prices shooting skywards.

According to Iqbal Malik, who runs 'Vatavaran' an NGO which had the trade

videographed and aired through television channels three years ago, Delhi

alone needs an estimated 300,000 units of blood annually and less than half

of that is legally collected by various blood banks while the rest is still

sourced from professional donors.

The Rotary International pamphlet, apart from outlining social prejudices

testifies to the fact that dependence on professional donors is widespread.

Such are the prejudices that last year, when large quantities of blood were

needed for the survivors of the devastating Jan 26 earthquake in western

Gujarat state, the IRCS refused to accept blood from the inmates of the

Central Jail.

Jail authorities complained to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)

of an attitude that was ''highly discriminatory'' towards prisoners as well

as ''derogatory and in violation of human rights'' but the NHRC upheld the

IRCS decision.

That came as a blow to the prisoners because under existing rules, if they

donate blood twice a year they are entitled to a month's remission on their

sentences for that year.

But the discriminatory attitude of the NHRC and the IRCS jibed with

findings of a study conducted by a leading firm of chartered accountants,

A.F. Ferguson, which opined that professional donors were mostly poor

people, many of whom were likely to be drug abusers and engaging in unsafe

sex.

Said Mulloli: ''What is required to be known is that donated blood is

scientifically safe and tested rather than its antecedents and that when

the country is facing severe shortages of transfusable blood.''

Ramesh Sharma, an activist for the influential Gandhi Peace Foundation said

the real problem was that following the Supreme Court order the government

never cared to carry out an awareness campaign to remove prejudices and

create a reliable cadre of donors that could be depended on for steady

supplies of blood as in other countries.

In fact, the National Blood Transfusion Council, the nodal regulatory body

set up following the Supreme Court directive has not met in the last two

years. ''Even when meetings are held nothing seems to move. Many decisions

have been taken but most remain on paper,'' said J.G. Jolly a council member.

A report published by the International Federation of the Red Cross three

years ago on the blood banking situation in South Asia noted that several

factors in the region ''frustrate the principle of voluntary

non-remunerated blood donation.''

The report also noted that recruitment and retention of voluntary blood

donors for adequate and safe blood supply presented a tremendous task which

called for a massive communication campaign aimed at involving all sections

of society in building a reliable transfusion system.

To date no such thing has happened in India where total requirements are

now estimated to be around eight million units of blood with actual

availability about half that figure. It is not uncommon to read about news

reports of patients waiting for weeks to get an operation done or actually

having died for lack of transfusable blood.

At the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, the capital's largest

medical facility, doctors look the other way as patients who desperately

need blood make deals with " vampires " who arrange the 'replacement blood'

which is sourced from a network of professional donors rather than from

relatives or friends as approved by existing law.

Voluntary agencies like JAC expect blood shortages to worsen as a result of

a new policy announced by the government in April under which blood banks

will no longer be allowed to accept replacement blood from even genuine

relatives or friends but source supplies purely from voluntary donations.

''This is next to impossible because of existing prejudices regarding blood

and the result will be that India, a country of a billion people will have

to increasingly depend on imported blood or blood products that can only

help multi-nationals in the business,'' said Mulloli.

Official figures available for the year 2000 show India now importing

annually 540 million dollars worth of blood products sourced mostly from

France and the United States and the trend steadily rising.

''In all this no thought is being given to ordinary people who already

cannot afford the prices charged say by the Rotary Blood Bank or those

living in rural areas where there are no blood banks and a large number of

patients depend on unbanked direct transfusions,'' said Mulloli. (END)

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[Guest guest]

Dear ,

It is a detailed report, isn't it? You can be sure of its validity. India is

the most racial of all the countries in the world. Its caste system is the

paramount example of racism, but the Govt and upper class people accept it

as a way of life. So you can expect this sort of things to go without any

resistance.

Think about it, 'when testing of blood is the sure measure of

safety and when the need is staggering, a body like National Human Rights

Commission taking such a stand of not accepting blood of prisoners and thus

to deny the human rights of prisoners', well, only in India it can happen.

I will say 'not far, we will have upper class human rights also chalked out

and published. The British when they were here as colonialists found this

caste system highly efficient in manipulation, control and exploitation,

they used it to their advantage. Now the neo-colonialists -The MNCs and TNCs

- find it easy and you will be able to see the sale of blood and blood

products from them go in the future with the tag " most safe " . And of course

bodies like Rotary Internationals will be the heralders of that onslaught,

they are paving the way for it.

I am sad to write so negatively all the time, when we should be writing and

talking about how to face real enemies of humanity, we have to fight our own

kind for survival. AIDS virus are far better than these 'humans', at least

they are only trying to live and survive.

Love

Maitreya

E-mail: <maitreya@...>

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