‘Professional’ donors at hand, nothing to bank on in Jharkhand

[Guest guest]

`Professional' donors at hand, nothing to bank on in Jharkhand

Lack of facilities to screen blood, mushrooming of private banks mean

the patient ends up the greatest loser

MANOJ PRASAD: Posted online: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 at 0150 hours

IST

RANCHI AUGUST 9: He is frail and emaciated. Not surprising. His

business is selling blood—his own. Shankar Das is a ``professional''

blood donor, and his home is a dirty corner at the end of the railway

platform. There are others like Das, and they live in penury.

The income of a few of them went up a notch after they discovered

that their blood belonged to the rare O-negative and B-negative

groups. The demand for these donors is high. So is the risk to

patients who use their blood. They don't sell blood directly to the

patients. The price is often dictated by middlemen.

Private blood banks and private nursing homes pay the donors about Rs

300 to Rs 400 for 350 ml of blood, but charge between Rs 1,000 and Rs

1,200 from buyers. The price shoots up if the patient is rich.

Everyone is happy with the set-up, donors, buyers and sellers. So it

would seem. But the benefactor, the patient, usually ends up as the

greatest loser. Such donors live in unhygienic condition and lead

unhealthy lives, and the chances of the patient contracting diseases

is high. A week back, a patient was tested HIV positive following

blood transfusion in a private clinic. He was tested negative for the

virus when he was admitted. A dozen doctors whom the Indian Express

contacted did not rule out more such cases.

According to an unofficial estimate, of the 86 AIDS cases detected in

Ranchi, Giridih, Hazaribagh and Jamshedpur in 2004-05, eight were

believed to have got the virus through blood transfusion. ``We don't

have any data to either accept or reject this estimate,'' says Dr

Jagannath Prasad, manager, Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences

(RIMS), the state's premier government hospital. ``The tests cost Rs

400 to Rs 500. Most patients can't afford to pay it,'' said the owner

of a private blood bank here.

Most of these blood banks, which have been issued the licence by the

state government, have their outlets in government hospitals. But at

least two private clinics here run blood banks sans licence. Even the

scene at blood banks run by the government in its own hospitals is

bad, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India

report (2003). This has been attributed to lack of enough donors or

proper facilities to test and preserve blood. The report states that

the Jharkhand government had envisaged setting up of 21 private and

government-run blood banks.

During 2001-02, there was a proposal to modernise blood banks run by

Central Coalfields Ltd and Bharat Coking Coal Ltd at Ramgarh and

Dhanbad. But by the end of March 2003, nowhere except a government

hospital in Giridih, were blood banks set up. The existing ones were

not modernised either, the report says.

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=75989

[Guest guest]

Ref: Professional’ donors at hand, nothing to bank on in Jharkhand

Dear FORUM,

It is indeed a matter of deep regreat to note that blood is collected from

professionsl donors which is not even properly tested and are sold at Rs.1000 to

Rs.1200 is just shocking. We are in Junagadh a city situated in Gujarat. We

cannot imagin that blood can

be purchased from the socalled donor.

In Junagadh we have Blood Banks duly licensed, managed by Public Trust,

supplying blood @Rs.300/400 duly tested in accordance with the standard laid

down by Drug Control of India/FDCA.

We have social irganisations like Sarvadaya Blood Bank,Satyam Yuvak

Mandal,Madhur Social Works,Rupayatan,Namaskar Group etc who are having

collectivly more than 25000 enlisted volunteers who are donating blood on need

base. Many blood collection camps are also organised by NGOs. So many efforts

are being made to generate awairness regarding blood coolection,blood

trasfusion, blood quality etc. with the support of leading Pathologists,Social

Workers & Blood Bank.

In nut-shell utmost efforts are required to be made in this particular aspect

and NGOs are the best medium to carry out the same in right spirit.

HEMANT NANAVATY

RUPAYATAN,

Junagadh-Gujarat

E-mail: <hemant_nanavaty@...>