National blood centre soon

National Blood Centre is coming up soon as a central platform from where collection and safe transfusion of blood will be controlled across the country, as indiscriminate business spreads in this crucial medical field.
Sources involved with this important development said health ministry has allocated Tk 140 million to establish the national blood centre.
Currently, more than 1,200 blood banks in and around public and private hospitals, clinics and other healthcare centers are operating without monitoring.
Most of them do not have licence and any control to ensure purity of the blood being injected mostly in critical patients to save their lives.
After establishment of the centre, at its selected site in Mahakhali, there would be a controlling authority in monitoring safe blood transfusion and stopping illegal blood trade, health officials said.
Unscreened blood transfusion cases in the country, in particular at Thana-and Upazila-level hospitals and clinics, are over 90 per cent, sources said.
According to a source in Bangladesh Safe Blood Transfusion Society (BSBTS) the major per cent of transfusions are not safe as all the hospitals do not have necessary testing or screening equipment, trained persons and necessary reagents for detecting deadly germs in blood before injecting into human body.
At the proposed National Blood Centre (NBC) a good number of administrative measures have been proposed to monitor and control unsafe dealings, empowered with a safe blood-transfusion policy.
Professor Ashadul Islam, head of Safe Blood Transfusion at BSMMU, said approval for the long-awaited money for building a blood centre would help the country in ensuring safe blood transfusion.
"The already-approved blood policy for establishing NBC envisages a series of measures that will change the entire scenario," the medical professor said.
Like in the developed countries, he said, "our government also has taken such an initiative finally that would adopt high-tech measures in blood fractionation and treatment facilities for blood-related diseases".
Professor Islam said the NBC control and monitoring would stop illegal blood trade and protect people from using unscreened blood.
He noted that, currently, in maximum unlicensed blood banks there are no trained technicians to screen the blood in the right way.
And at the upazila level the scenario is dangerous. "The patients are taking unscreened blood and there is a brisk trade in it," he added.
An official in the ministry of health and family welfare said although the government has enacted laws for safe blood transfusion, but, as there is no authority and many other departments placed in a same place, it has become difficult to control and monitor the matters across the country.
He said as the first installment of money had already been allocated, so, after its disbursement in December, the construction works would be started soon in Mahakhali health village.
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