West Bengal: Six-fold increse in AIDS cases and poor blood safery

[Guest guest]

Dear FORUM,

The Hindustan Times, Kolkata (Calcutta) carries the news datelined

23 May, 2004 that there has been a six-fold increase in the number of

AIDS cases in the state of West Bengal in eastern India despite

pumping crores of rupees (for the record, Rs 23 crores) in stemming

the disease.

The Controller and Auditor General (CAG) has accused the state

health department of failing to spread awareness about AIDS.

The CAG report says North Bengal has the highest number of cases. The

patients are mostly truck drivers and tea garden workers. In 1998,

1,246 HIV positive cases were reported from this region . In 2000,

the figure rose to 2,357.

The CAG finds faults with health department for not examining the

and checking thoroughly the blood collected by blood banks,

especially those in the districts like Darjeeling, Malda, Birbhum and

Burdwan. The banks here have collected 1,30,000 packets of blood but

only 82,000 have been thoroughly examined by the health department,

the report says.

NACO (National AIDS Control Organisation) guidelines clearly

instruct the health department to examine each and every packet of

blood before being passed to the patient but even then 50,000

bottles of blood have been given to patients without checking,CAG

claims, which the state heath director refutes.

The blood bank authorities meanwhile plead helplessness due to lack

of infrastucture.

Ranjita Biswas

Calcutta

Ranjita Biswas " <ranjita@...>